Review of In a Valley of Violence (2016) by John H — 25 Nov 2017

In a Valley . . . Skimmed through the opening credits and was surprised later to find a familiar face farther along in this dismal production: John Travolta. My screen hero...appearing here in this instantly forgettable piece of nonsense.

I paused the show, part way through, and thought: Poor dialogue. Poor make up. Poor direction. Sketchy continuity. Perfect music (!). Poor blocking. Disastrous story line begging memories of Shane and the early Eastwood spaghetti westerns.

People with neat haircuts and clean faces playing sweaty, filthy characters. Several scenes seemed like shoddy, first run-throughs, kept in to avoid the cost of retakes. Don't fire the editor, fire the director! Camera work endlessly disastrous.

Countless flaws. Now the strange windmill at the end of the street is spinning fast although there is no wind. A moment later, it sits, frozen in time. Whoa! Watch out for that rattlesnake!...whose appearance in this disaster is instantly forgettable.

Even my hero with that incredibly sorry display of a bad leg. Hobbled at times. Didn't hobble at other times. A flashback from Hell which explained nearly nothing. Travolta's pathetic performance was only exceeded by his miscast son who just never, ever measured up.

Nor did the guy's girlfriend/fiancé. There was a complete lack of sincere interaction between nearly every character in every scene. I was extremely happy to see no religious cross put on the burial site of the man's dog.

Just a thoughtfully designed, artful letter 'A' surrounded by 62 rocks of roughly the same dimension. What care! What consideration! And all of the killing later because 'A' was stabbed.

I didn't watch this (after the first half hour) for the story line, I watched it for the next new element of production disaster. Never disappointed. Travolta...how could you! You can read. You don't need the money.