Red Rock West (1993)

Directed by John Dahl. Starring Nicolas Cage, Lara Flynn Boyle, Dennis Hopper, J. T. Walsh, Timothy Carhart, Dan Shor, Dwight Yoakam. [R]

Wry neo-noir about a drifter (Cage) being mistaken by a bartender (Walsh) as a hitman and hiring him to rub out his wife (Boyle), but that’s only the beginning of the fiendishly twisty story. There are some contrivances along the way, and it’s more of a pastiche of genre greatest hits than anything breathlessly original, but the ingenious set-ups and juicy characterizations sell all of the deliciously rampant amorality, not to mention the actors’ astounded reactions to the pile-up of complications. Well cast, especially for players sliding into their specialties (e.g., Hopper playing a screw-loose psycho); Dahl co-wrote the inventive script with his brother, Rick, though his direction is more straightforward than stylish, which usually doesn’t favor these kinds of blackly comic thrillers. Debuted overseas and on cable in 1993, but didn’t get a limited theatrical North American release until the following year.

78/100