The Bygone

This had so much promise, and then went so badly off the rails midway through that it destroyed all the good that had come before it. Very cliched and just downright stupid. Really just a stinking bad movie. It gets 1 star for the horse.

I watched this movie because the story involved a Native American. The movie will hold your attention because it tells a story of exploitation. The actors bring the characters to life, and the soundtrack adds to the journey you will take with them.

Human trafficking is a horrible, yet profitable business. Better watch your ass if you wanna play in that game. It's a rather slow watch. You got a meek cowboy trying to rescue some chick he accidentally encountered. And blah de blah, wants to be a knight in shining armor at whatever cost.

If this was a card game the dealer arrived without a full deck but lots of jokers. Rather like a last minute college paper that tries to heap a bunch of tired cliches into a disjointed, rambling, semi-coherent paper without a premise or thesis, this flick dusts off all the worst stereotypes and ties them to the mast of our flagging attention. Fight scenes with no clear opponents, violence for violence sake, paper thin characterizations of cartoon bad guys, the classic wimpy pretty boy and hardened hooker who is bound for a wet end, it's all heaped together here. As mesmerizing as a close up of a baby's arm being fed into a meat grinder. Avert your eyes.

I enjoyed this movie, but there were some inaccuracies that kept me from enjoying it to the fullest. Being from North Dakota, I have quite a bit of background of where places are. Some of the places mention did not line up with their actual locations. Waniya says that she is from Berthold, since they mention Mandaree after that, I assume they mean Fort Berthold Reservation. There are two problems with that: 1) Madaree is not above the Missouri like Waniya says and 2) the description says that he works to rescue a Lakota girl, but Fort Berthold is home to the Three Affiliated Tribes, not the Lakota. Next, There are no armadillo in North Dakota. Finally, there are not as many windmills in North Dakota as the movie depicts.

This movie is horrible the writer and the director made this so slow and very boring the ending sucked the action through out the movie was very obsolete it could have been so much better and had more of a story line to the movie.

There was almost a lot to like about this movie. Decent main story, some good twists, I thought some of the acting was very good (very impressed by Ms. Starsong!). On the other hand, some was subcalibre (Kip was only believable as that kid you ignored in high school. Poor casting choice there!) and the minor plots were yawn-worthy. I can overlook some things just by assuming they had a limited budget. But the (ridiculously overused) action device of running out of bullets? Do they not know how to load the guns, or did they only have 10 blanks for the whole movie? In the final scene, Kip fires 3 shots and is out of bullets for 2 (6 shot) revolvers, one of which he didn't * before he fired (Given that we are told ahead of time that they are single action, pulling that trigger without cocking should have done nothing NOT fired the weapon.) WTF? Anyway, that's where this movie falls apart. I'm guessing a producer hacked it up post-production.