GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Leoni Haney Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

Cassandra Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

chris This is a movie that had slipped under my radar until this evening. Watched it pretty late at night and would recommend that as the best time to take it in. It is far fetched and a little cringe worthy in rare moments,but overall it keeps you gripped for the entirety of the movie. Acting all round is good. Dennis Hopper is fantastic - worth watching the entire movie just to see him in the car scene. Only a true maniac could act like that much of a maniac. J T Walsh was also believably sinister. I just found it enjoyable to watch overall - mostly for the little things - moments of acting brilliance and interesting shots and settings. It's kind of hard to describe but even for such a fast paced plot with so many twists and turns - the overall feel of the movie had a comforting quality about it and was vaguely reminiscent of Breakdown. Definitely worth a watch.

PWNYCNY Red Rock West is a clever and entertaining movie about four people, Michael, Lyle, Suzanne and Wayne (the latter two are married) and $500,000 in cash, hidden somewhere. Michael is a drifter; Suzanne and Wayne have taken out contracts on each other, and Lyle is a cold-blooded assassin. The story is somber, at times chilling and always suspenseful. Michael gets involved purely on a whim, driven by the need to get some money, fast. That immediately lands him in trouble. It is revealed that Wayne, who is thoroughly detestable not because he is so obnoxious (he is polite and civil) but because he is such a dolt, is an office worker for a large firm who embezzled $1,900,000. To avoid the law and provide himself cover, he becomes the law, getting himself elected sheriff of a small out of the way town, Red Rock. Suzanne, of course, is aware of Wayne's secret, which, of course, sows the seeds of distrust, which then transforms into treachery. Once Lyle enters the scene, the formula for catastrophe can only explode into open violence. Lyle is the catalyst for the violence. He also is charming and detestable, but unlike the other three, is far more despicable. Unlike Suzanne, who is implicated in having murdered someone, and Wayne, who is willing to kill to protect his secret, and Michael who is not vicious, Lyle is a predator. Unsurprisingly, once Lyle, played by Dennis Hopper, enters the story, he subsequently dominates the movie.The only problem with the movie is its ending. It's not a major problem, but maybe it could have been reworked. Michael and Suzanne are on a train leaving town, with the money. Lyle is dead and grumpy Wayne has been shot. Michael and Suzanne have already been intimate and Michael obviously cares about her. The caring feeling, however, is not mutual, and in reaction, Michael tosses Suzanne and the most of the money out of the train. This tests the limits of plausibility. A man, strapped for cash, on a train with a young, sexy woman in possession of a huge amount of cash, and whose life he has saved, throwing both her and the money out? True, she points a gun at him, but he knows it's not loaded, so there is no harm. So why toss her and the money out? They deserve each other, and the presence of $500,000 in cash could smooth over a lot of ruffled feathers.

cmoyton John Dahls opening salvo as director ranks among the best compared to his fellow contemporary directors. Sandwiched between Kill Me Again and The Last Seduction, Red Rock West was one of three "neo noirs" directed by Dahl who now finds himself marooned in TV land. It has a cast to die for and Nicholas Cage at the peak of his career. It is fantastic to see that the late J.T. Walsh is given a substantial role as bar owner/sheriff Wayne and shares as much screen time as Cage, Hopper and Boyle.Cage plays an out of work jobless drifter who in desperation pretends to be someone else to secure employment. Unfortunately the "job" requires him to murder the wife of a small town bar owner. Although he takes the money and runs from the town of Red Rock his own honesty sucks him back into the town into a shed load of trouble. Being in noir territory plot twists and deception abound. Denniis Hopper excels as hit-man Lyle. His acting is a joy to behold - all the usual Hopper mannerisms are present and the razor sharp dialogue flows from his lips in a unique style that no other actor is ever likely to replicate again. A true one off. Having said that the movies sharpest line is given to bit part actor Dwight Yoakam. My only beef is how they made sexy actress Lara Flynn Boyle look so frumpy in her rural cowgirl clothing but her acting is first class as usual.Of course there are the usual plot contrivances only found in movies in order to move the story along - the worst possibly being Cage being rescued by Hopper (the man he happens to be impersonating) just after he escapes the clutches of J.T. Walsh's crooked sheriff.I am always amazed at the blank expressions i receive when i name check this movie to others. Do yourself a favour and rent/buy this movie immediately.

johnnyboyz John Dahl's Red Rock West is a neat, taut, stripped down piece of cut-and-thrust film-making without gimmickry nor a single false string attached. In a current contemporary world of American film-making, and one that was almost certainly predominant at the time of Red Rock West's inception, how wonderful it is to uncover a film that refrains from the over indulgence of extravagance and the ideology that awe is built on a foundation of overkill and visuals. That's not to say Red Rock West is without extravagance nor awe, such is Dahl's ability, that the film is full of a number of various incidences and twists that are exactly these things and gotten across by way of little more than a glance from one of the character's or an individual cut of the camera. When we hark back to America's independent cinematic boom of the late 1980s and going on into the early 1990s, certainly a boom that saw a number of films and individual directors both honoured and recognised on the European film circuit at the top level in a series of Golden Palm nominations, the displaying of Red Rock West shows we must not glance over the name of Dahl when speaking of both the films and directors of that era, namely: the Coen Brothers; Steven Soderburgh; Spike Lee and Tarantino, et al.The film revolves around Nicolas Cage's character named Michael Williams, an ex-Marine of American nationality down on his luck and strapped for money in the dusty outback of Wyoming. He lives out of his car; uses random road side troughs full of water as makeshift sinks and struggles to find work, the latest failing being a construction site job that doesn't come through, although later on, he'll find ample opportunity at constructing something: a monstrosity of a scenario for himself. Unbeknownst to us at the time, he's going into the misadventure he'll come to have with a prior tragedy of having served time in the Vietnam War, but suffering during this stretch at the hands of a missile attack on a base in Lebanon he was positioned at which forced him into enduring a glut of both chaos and death. The event that may very well lend itself to Williams' dishevelled and down-beat tone and attitude, something Cage pulls off in that naturalistic manner he's done so on occasion since, shares eerie parallels with what will come to unfold around him as another glut of death and chaos unfolds around a man who has signed up for something you only realise you don't want to be anywhere near when it gets ugly as 'wrong place – wrong time' scenario once again kicks in.The devilish premise sees Williams pretend to be the Texan hit-man an apparent bar owner named Wayne (Walsh) called for some days ago so as to do some local dirty-work he wants taken care of. His looming over a seated Cage whilst in the office an early establishing of power, the sort of power that he'll come to have over him as Williams is forced throughout into proverbially dancing to the tune of others. But rather than eliminate the target, Wayne's wife played by Lara Flynn Boyle, Williams warns her of the predicament and that her marriage ought quite clearly be an item of concern form here on in. Once all is said and done, the real hit-man in Dennis Hopper's Lyle shows up in jet black Texan attire and similarly coloured car more resembling a hearse than anything else, whilst developments and complications in exactly who it is the chief of police is in the whole area open up.For Cage's character, and like in most good film noir when dealing with the down-trodden lead whom treads a fine line between right and wrong, the persistent idea of torn morals floats to the surface relatively quickly and consistently in Red Rock West. In just observing the premise, the notion of Williams illegally accepting the offer of being paid to kill someone before refraining from doing it when confronted with the innocent figure of Wayne's wife, Dahl highlights his character's soon-to-be prominent ever shifting; ever changing attitudes to what crime infused activity is playing out around him. Throughout, Williams lies; shoots; kills and steals but additionally saves; offers salvation and actually avoids violence on several occasions when straight forward murder would have offered a simple way out of a predicament. Given this, Dahl expertly manoeuvres Williams from one town in the form of Red Rock to another and then back over the border again, a sort of physical flitting from one place to another in what is a physical manifestation of both the above theories of a film noir's male lead as well as Cage's character's constantly ambiguous hopping from justified in his actions to not as so.Red Rock West moulds a fascinating, and quite terrifying at times, tale out of all these elements; combining a number of items such as double-crosses; multiple identities and intense connections characters have with one another, the sorts that they're forced into forging before later being asked what they truly mean to them. Dahl additionally, and in a very basic sense, taps into a certain idea of post-war disillusionment through his lead in Williams' disconnection from the rest of society seeing him inhabit a desolate and often incomprehensible rural locale in which he just about scrapes by. This, as an old war injury refrains him from making any true advancement in a chosen field of work. Red Rock West is a tight, gripping piece; the sort that arrives with a steady and effective eye on a variety of items all the while under the control of a steady, focused hand.