While perfectly entertaining, this western-for-wiseacres is also a little undernourished. Ethan Hawke is all squinty as a haunted drifter who stops for water in the wrong nowhere town in New Mexico. In the very slim revenge narrative that ensues (we’ll avoid mentioning John Wick), Karen Gillan and James Ransone are the liveliest participants. John Travolta’s turn as the town Marshal is self-defeating, partly because he’s come to symbolize so much of what’s sad and weird and distracting about Hollywood, and partly because this melding of The Quick and the Dead and later Tarantino is already circling the drain of shallow genre irony. Having said all that, one unforgettable, ecstatically cinematic moment between Hawke and Taissa Farmiga shows us what writer-director Ti West—who has his fans, and deserves them—is really capable of.

Georgia Straight, October 2016