Spoiler alert: This review may contain some spoilers!
Review: Red Rock West
From: Cagedcinema.tumblr.com
Red Rock West
John Dahl (USA, 1993)
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Dennis Hopper, Lara Flynn Boyle
Red Rock West is a beautiful film. It is a film made by movie lovers, for movie lovers, with clearly lots of fun and enthusiasm. It is as much a film-noir as it is a western, a thriller or perhaps a black comedy. Set in middle-of-nowhere Wyoming the film starts with the masculine ex-marine Michael Williams (Cage), with his muscle car on the side of the road. He has almost no gas, only some peanuts as food, and little money.
He is on his way to apply for a job at an oilfield. Seemingly a friend told him this job would be a definitive. Williams, however, doesn’t get hired due to a war injury. Williams hits the road again, searching for a job in another place. He stops at a local gas station, where he wants to fill his tank and ask for advice. The gas station seems abandoned and at the cash register some cash is exposed…
This is one of the first in many moments where William’s moral stance is put to the test. Steal the much needed money or leave it alone and stay broke? Luckily, Williams doesn’t have to make a choice; the owner unexpectedly appears. Williams asks for gas and a place where he can find a job. “You can try Red Rock” says the man, while he fills the tank for five dollars –the last of William’s money.
“Welcome to Red Rock” reads a –somewhat unsettling- metal sign on the side of the road when Williams enters the town. It is a sign that he will encounter many more times, for it seems that leaving Red Rock isn’t as easy as entering it. It is here where it all goes downhill
He asks for a job in the local bar, which results in a strange twist of fate. The bartender (J.T. Marsh) thinks Williams is the killer he had hired to murder his cheating wife! The pay for it is big and Williams can’t resist the temptation; he accepts the offer. Instead of killing the bartender’s wife though, he explains her the whole situation, She, however doesn’t seem impressed. She actually wants him to do the reverse and kill her husband for double the money!
Williams, now full on cash, tries to avoid problems and take a leave from Red Rock, but by bad luck (or fate?), he keeps finding his way back to the diabolical town. When the real killer (a brilliant Dennis Hopper) shows up and the existence of even more money is discovered, Williams’ search for money turns into a rat race, where lust, greed, obsession and violence are no exceptions.
As you can read, Red Rock West is a dark film. Every character has its own secret agenda and even Williams’’ moral is sometimes quite ambiguous. Although the film is quite funny sometimes, with enough irony and black humor, it is still one of the more serious films starring Nicolas Cage. Cage plays his character quite natural and even has few of his famous freak-outs.
The atmosphere of this film is just brilliant. The film is well shot, the music is amazing (too bad I couldn’t find it anywhere on the internet), the cast is great, the pace is fast and the plot is gripping. It has many great and exciting scenes and the way the thriller and western genres are combined is very entertaining. Still, somehow, the film never really delivers a form of profoundness, which more memorable and canonical films do provide. It is as if something is missing.
Nonetheless, I think Red Rock West is an extremely underrated and overslept film. Don’t expect a full blown masterpiece here. Rather expect a very good and entertaining thriller/western with a great role for Nicolas Cage.
As Roger Ebert fittingly concluded his review of the film:
“In a sense, we’ve been in Red Rock many times before: It’s a town where plots lie in wait for unsuspecting visitors, where hatred runs deep, where love is never enough of a motive for doing anything when cash is available.”
And we love it there.
Rating: 8
Poor choice. 
