MUBI

I like Alex Cox, I really do. I think WALKER is a tremendous film, SID & NANCY is compelling, and REPO MAN is a genre-busting masterpiece. I learned a lot about the spaghetti western genre by hearing him talk about it in various documentaries and shorts, pointing me in the direction of many films I would otherwise have not seen. While WALKER is a really cool acid western, I found out about STRAIGHT TO HELL, and it looked like a really cool modern-day western, with gun-toting guys in suits a la Jean-Pierre Melville hiding in a seedy Mexican town with a stash of cash while they deal with the local scum. It also has Joe Strummer and Jim Jarmusch in it. What’s not to like? I found the film to be nearly unwatchable, none of the characters are interesting on any level, most of them scream instead of talk, and the story feels like it was written over the course of a drunken evening in which Alex Cox was playing Edward Forty-Hands with Dick Rude and a case of Colt 45 while they both beat their faces against a typewriter. The whole thing just feels out of tune, it’s a fun concept that Cox should’ve been right in the pocket with, instead he just gorged himself stupid on it. The title seems indicative of the production’s outcome, this one is only worth seeing to the biggest of Cox devotees.