Rent Dead for a Dollar (2022)

Avoid at all costs. - Dead for a Dollar review by TJ

I would pay more than a dollar to avoid this rubbish. What a waste of 2 excellent lead actors skill set - I cannot believe they attached their names and reputations to this. And Waltz might be great actor, but he does not play an authentic cowboy, especially with his barely hidden accent. This terrible casting will not reflect well on him. Poorly written rubbish, such a badly executed screenplay. Looks like it was filmed on a shoe string budget. I struggle to recall a film so underwhelmingly disappointing on so many levels.

Lacklustre Western - Dead for a Dollar review by Alphaville

Always good to see a new Western being made these days, with wide New Mexico vistas and bad guys out to kill good guys. Unfortunately, and not for the first time, pedestrian direction from Walter Hill sucks the drama out of every scene. He shoots too close in, on one face or another, swivelling the camera around to mimic action. Most of the characters don’t work, especially the confused female lead around whom the story unfolds. It plays like one of those 1960s low-budget Italian Westerns, but with barely even a score to add some excitement to affairs. Compare with a much better new Western: The Old Way.

The spirit of the western lives on - Dead for a Dollar review by NP

It's held back a little by the obviously shoestring production values, but there's something genuinely beautiful and moving in Dead for a Dollar's sincere evocation of the classical Western. The ghosts of Boetticher, Mann, De Toth et al are present in every frame.

The cast acquit themselves well and Hill's direction is always lucid and quietly purposeful; if streaming services like Netflix were worth a darn, they'd be giving him proper budgets to make a string of genre exercises like this.