I’m sure anyone looking here has heard about this thing before. Probably not the movie itself but everything that went on with it. I watched it because I like westerns and even though I know he’s a dick I still like Baldwin’s stuff in movies. Heavens Prisoners helped me get through a hard time in my life, I guess so did The Edge a little so there’s that for what it’s worth and I thought this thing was pretty good if you like slow westerns but it’s not nearly as uneventful as The Deputy’s Wife where the most exciting thing was someone throwing a lamp. But instead of dilly dallying let’s get into what happened here.

I feel like I should apologize for this next paragraph in advance but here goes.

A man enters a house and encounters a woman.

“I’ve written you to come here because of your daughter’s son,” she explains.

“I’m terribly sorry ma’am” he says, even though they are kin, his blue eyes pierce her in a way she hasn’t known since her husband was shot by Apache huntsmen. “I’m just terrible awful sorry for this,” and he cuts loose a thick, rumbling, nine second fart.

At first she is unsure of what has happened since there hadn’t seemed to be any clouds or thunder on the frontier’s horizon and then the crippling aroma of a diet of beans and occasional oats enters into the small corner she was sitting in. “Jesus! Jesus!” She wails, standing and waving her hands. “Jesus! Jesus stab me in the heart! You are wretched and vile trash! Society has a name for people like you and that name is garbage! Where do you think you come from to come in here, to my home, where I’ve raised two boys all by myself, who do you think you are to just come in here and release like that? Who do you think you are? Piss trash is what you are! Nothing more than common piss trash out by the saloon where every drunken man, horse and dirt weevil piss and shit and bathe in it and smear it in their hair and wash their clothes with nothing more than piss and shit! Where did you come from? My boys went to serve their country as all good men should and you walk in to my home like some king or royalty from Denmark and you just release like piss trash. Do you have any children left sir I bet if you did even the youngest of them wear overalls with no shoes and chew tobacco and take loose women! Garbage and piss! Releasing in here in my home! You should be forever ashamed of yourself you and all of your generations who take off your clothes and roll nude in the mud and shit in front of the Dry and Sundry rolling around and sticking your fingers and thumbs only God knows where and then you stand in the street and mules and flies rub on your clothes and then you come up here to my home on this land and release? I’ve cleaned chamber pots with more decency than you and swore that morning my husband died I would never clean another man’s chamber pot again so you can take your filth your effluvience your garbage and piss right back out that door you came in through and down those stairs and go sleep in the shitpile you came from!” It was truly amazing that she got all of that out in one breath but here she pauses, inhales and whispers, “I see the Holy Ghost descending now from the Heavens to visit upon you His Judgement.”

So there is this part where the US Marshall asks the aunt, “did you tell your brother about the boy?” and she kind of looks off to the side and they edit into another scene. At least that’s the way I interpreted it. Of course others might see things differently.

There’s another part as we move into the third act (although not the finale) when Travis Fimmel’s character is threatening to kill or just maybe seduce this other widow who lives in the plains who hasn’t seen a man in years. it’s been a couple of days since I watched this and while I didn’t write or direct or have anything to do with this I don’t need to feel apologetic but I feel like I should apologize for this next sequence too but I remember the scene going something like this :

Steely eyed gunman grabs widow by throat, pushes her against wooden post, demands to know which way Rust left so he can track him down to collect the bounty.

Widow defiantly grabs gunman’s crotch and speaks in a terribly inappropriate Irish accent “now t’er’s some meat and vegetables laddie”. She rips his kerchief off with her teeth and continues, astonishing everyone involved with her crudeness and offensive behavior, “how’s about ye boil me some cabbage aye it’s been a moment since i felt yer man’s touch??” and twists around, yanking up her petticoat. “I been yearning’ fer some of yer corned beef since ye trounced your filthy muckers in me entryway.”

Amazed, he unbuckles and unpins all four of his layers of wool and leather leg dressings, revealing a crotch and thigh area filled with lengthy hairs and dirty blisters. His tiny peep barely protruding from the giant and unkempt mound of pubis. “Roll em high and deal em low!!” He whistles through his missing front teeth. “Dip my wicket and call me Billy!!” and he begins dancing by himself in a circle, slapping himself on his own bare buttocks, acting like he’s riding a horse. “Yipping skip dip footy how!” The camera pans out, the sound lowers, all we can see in frame is this man jumping around in a circle slapping his ass and the woman leaning against a load bearing column with her privates exposed, presenting herself unwholesomely. The shot distances itself out through a window and the widow’s boy comes in to focus. He is sitting on the rickety front porch, petting a dog. The animal appears happy and playful, the child appears sullen, pensive. Hey looks to his pet and whispers, “maybe this time I’ll get a new daddy!” and the sound increases to the noises of “hoopity foop flop how too!” and the door opens and out comes the American bounty hunter hooking together his breeches with the widow behind him trying to untustle her hair even though it seems like the entire pan out only took maybe 90 seconds but maybe it was just the heat or he overindulged himself by playing with his own butt cheeks for too long or something but all of that seems over for now and we can move on to the big shoot out and the big finale of the movie and hopefully Baldwin and his producing buddies who made this don’t have more offensive shit up their sleeves surely not right.

All good westerns seem to need to have some sort of good gunfight before the thing is over. Eventually Rust and the boy come to take a rest in this small town out in the middle of nowhere. The boy hides and Rust goes to the saloon for a sit down. Inside a man is talking up his exploits of killing outlaws and Native Americans and sees Rust sitting there, minding his own business. The killer takes several shots of whatever undustilled liquor they’re drinking and waffles over to the table.

“Well lookee here” he mumbles, “if it ain’t my son of a bitch daddy who left my ma at home when we wuz destitute and the land were barren and all we had to eat wuz prairie dogs and gophers and thorn bushes gidblurn you we drank water out of mud puddles and slept in holes in the ground I dug with my own fingers you blasted son of a bitch I swore I’d kill you if I ever seen you again you horned toad sucking sack of shit and here you are right in front of me sitting there like the Queen of Egypt where’s your grapes and olives now princess I oughta skin you alive like I did ole Wagner Sumpkin when he shot my gopher but that ain’t good enough for the likes of you yellow tomcat sorry bastard you know what you done and yer gonna pay hangin ain’t hard enough you gonna suffer somethin eternal like the Archangel Gabriel come on down from heaven and stuck that fiery sword up your gullet and then pulled it out and roasted your pecker right in front of you and then Old Scratch opened up them gates of hell and started pulling you on down in there but then coughed you back up so you could pay some more while I whittle a bow and some arrows outta your bones and a string outta your guts and shoot you full -“

“Look I think you have the wrong guy,” Rust volleys, spreading his palms out in front of him. Is he acting passively or is he trying to get someone to read his fortune through the lines on his hands?

You see, when Rust was a small child living on the streets and on the run from early Chicago mafia, he found a favorite hiding place in the ruins of an arcade along one of the Great Lakes. There he could sort out his stolen candlesticks, pocket watches and whatever greenbacks he had self inherited that day knowing that if anyone came upon him he could send them to the next life using his skills with the switchblade. “Hai! Kai! Hoof! Jab jab jab!!” he would practice in the shadows under the collapsed roof of the carousel. “Hai! Hoof!! Stick!” until one night his blade found purchase in the body of a Gypsy child scavenging for kindling. “Curajul meu!!!” the child screamed and screamed over and over, running under the boardwalk to his astonished tribe. “Curajul meu…” he whispered as he died in the arms of his one eyed mother. “One day one of us will find you you filthy swine and rip your bones from your skin while you lie breathing and we shall mark upon the flesh of your palms the soul’s eternal curse until the pale horseman find you and only then will you be allowed forgiveness for the murder of this boy my son only then will you sniff pity and begin the process of limitless torture be prepared Rust be prepared.”

I mean I think that’s how it went but luckily for Rust (kind of) the Marshalls show up and there’s a good old fashioned stand off and a big shoot out by the stable and I didn’t realize who that was until then but that’s Gary Busey’s kid and this all leads up to the big showdown in that arroyo or canyon or gulley or whatever and that leads up to the eventual end.

Oh shit! What’s this movie about? A young kid accidentally kills a grown up so the town sentences him to hang. One night while he’s sleeping in his cell someone comes in and kills everyone and it’s his grandpa, one of those old fashioned killers and dynamiters and his name is (something) Rust and he’s taking his grandson to Mexico. Since he killed a bunch of folks there the gov puts a bounty on his head and a bunch of folks try and track him and the kid down. There are a lot of similarities to Unforgiven but hey I like Baldwin despite his personal life and I still like Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone and Big Schwartzie and Clint Eastwood so what can I say?

FILED UNDER: I ACTUALLY REALLY LIKED THIS MOVIE AND BEAN FARTS AND CURAJUL MEU