Main cast: Brock Harris (Billy Tyson), Skylar Witte (Jocelyn Callahan), Michael Welch (Jody Callahan), Peter Sherayko (Red), David DeLuise (Joe), Jay Pickett (Twigs), Caia Coley (Eloise), Brock Burnett (Potts), Keikilani Grune (Nellie Rhyker), Jerry Bestpitch (Hal), Kevin McNiven (Chauncy), Ardeshir Radpour (Hardy), Larry Poole (Wiley), Cam Gigandet (Sid Callahan), and Bruce Dern (Blair Callahan)
Director: Michael Feifer
Last Shoot Out is a pretty modestly-budgeted Western flick, so expect the usual cowboys and strong-willed women in trouble drama.
Jocelyn is aghast to discover that her husband Jody didn’t just kill her father; he’s also on the psychotic side, as is the rest of his clan. She discovers this on her wedding reception, yikes, but fortunately, her evil new family are too busy bragging about their sins to realize that she’s overheard them.
She flees, but ah, while I’m not sure whether she just keeps running all this while, a week later she is lost and about to keel over from exhaustion, with her brother-in-law Sid close behind.
Fortunately, she by chance bumps into gunslinger Billy Tyson and his friend Red, and the two men gallantly decide that it’s only right that they help her escape her husband and the man’s uniformly horrible, homicidal family members.
Since this is a cowboy show, there are the obligatory carriage scene, the duel, and the grand showdown of bad guys laying siege on the good guys. Yes, this movie doesn’t try so hard to buck the formula.
The biggest star in the main billing, Bruce Dern, has basically a cameo, while Cam Gigandet and Michael Welch were both in Twilight—wonder if one invited the other to be in the show, eh.
One obvious issue while I’m watching this is the constant repetition. Characters will recall a scene that has just taken place previously, either via flashback or monologues, and sadly, all this is wasted on me because I don’t have the memory of a goldfish. For example, when Jocelyn finally recovers after being rescued by Billy and Red, she recaps in detail the whole thing up to the point of her rescue to these two men. Why? I just saw everything that happened!
Another issue closely linked to the previous one is that these characters don’t talk normally. They monologue or give speeches like this is some kind of Shakespearean play or something. Every conversation goes on for interminable lengths of time because these people are busy doing theater in the wild, wild West.
This theatrical nature of the script isn’t always a negative, however. Bruce Dern, Cam Gigandet, and Michael Welch are very entertaining as a trio of utterly amoral, homicidal bastardy, striking the perfect balance of humor and menace in their unfortunately very few scenes.
The movie also allows some old characters and Jocelyn to have their kick-ass moments, which is awesome, as we can’t have Billy do everything all on his own.
This is a good thing because while Brock Harris looks the part of a handsome gunslinger with a great aim, the poor man is playing a character that has all the personality of a piece of plank. There is nothing memorable about Billy at all. While it may be a deliberate choice for him to play the part of a no-nonsense fellow among a cast of theatrical characters, maybe to accentuate his mysterious loner cowboy archetype nature, it also makes him the blandest and most forgettable character in the movie.
Still, the cast actually put on an overall solid performance, one far better than what would be found in a not-so-big-budgeted movie of this nature.
In the end, this is a watchable movie, although it can get unintentionally too hammy for its own good at times, thanks to a cast that go some distance to elevate a pretty derivative script.
Now, can someone do me a favor and put Mr Gigandet and Warren Kole in the same movie, one in which they get to play adorable sexy psychos like they are put on Earth to do? Come on, it’d be awesome!
