Red Rock West (Red Rock West)

In Preston Sturges’s excellent comedy Sullivan’s Travels (1941), a successful film director complains that no matter what he does, some mysterious force always draws him back to Hollywood. A similar magnetism seems to hold the protagonist of the neo-noir Red Rock West in a godforsaken town in the middle of Wyoming. Michael’s main problem, however, is that he hasn’t got a dime and he got involved with dangerous people including a greedy married couple and a hit man they’ve both hired to kill their spouse. Director John Dahl, now active almost exclusively in television, made a name for himself as a neo-noir specialist early in his career in the late 1980s and early 90s, and his second feature, Red Rock West, is quite possibly his most successful effort. The cleverly plotted script recalls crime films by the Coen brothers, and the casting of Nicolas Cage and the rural American setting may evoke Lynch’s Wild at Heart (1990).

Milan Hain