Dead Man's Burden (Jared Moshe, 2012)

4/10
I keep going to these new, indie western movies hoping someone is going to revitalize the genre. Meek's Cutoff came the closest, but others like The Last Christeros and this one fall well short. This is more a family drama set in the west than a real western, but bares none of the spark of, say, The Furies, an example of such a thing being done a million times better. I won't bother detailing the plot much - a woman, her husband, and her long-absent-since-returned brother squabble over the woman's land - because it would probably be as boring to write as it was to watch. Aside from the grave mistake of being boring, Dead Man's Burden fails in a major way: at least two of the main characters don't look like they belong in a western - they look like they've been pulled from Central Casting and given a layer of grime. The woman in particular has brown roots showing through her blonde hair the entire film - I wonder what brand of salon dye they used in the 1800's? The music for the movie is also terrible, barely soap opera caliber obnoxiousness. Maybe next year someone will get it right...