Looking and sounding very like his father, Scott Eastwood stars as Jackson, an ex civil war soldier on a journey to save his kidnapped wife who has been kidnapped by bandits heading for Mexico that have also burned his house to the ground. Driven and focused Jackson will stop at nothing to get his wife back however, like some kind of cursed Jonah, anyone either good or evil, that he bumps into along the way seems to end up dead. The only exception seems to be a strange character named Ezra (Walter Goggins) who appears from time to time and usually at the more opportune moments.

With disappointing use the excellent talents of both Goggins and Danny Glover as Benjamin Carver, a war colleague of Jackson’s, who only seems to appear to give some exposition to Jackson’s background and serves no other real purpose. So this film is all very much about Eastwood but he doesn’t have the screen presence or acting skills as yet, to pull this off without stronger support characters and when the, fairly obvious, twist comes, it makes the first hour of the movie pointless and nonsensical.

There are all the revenge based themes of a good western there, it’s just not handled well enough to make a good movie. Real credit here has to go to veteran cinematographer Dean Cundey who makes the scenery and sets look fantastic and deserves a mention for giving the movie a great classic western vibe, unfortunately as a whole the same can’t be said of the movie.

DJ Speaks Rating: 4 Out Of 10