8 Million Ways to Die is about as subtle as hitting someone in the head with a frying pan. This is never more evident than in the opening scene and the climax. Both of those big moments feature "dramatic" confrontations that consist of guns being pointed while people incessantly shout at one another. And there is no content to the words yelled back and forth beyond repetition of various threats. I had to mute the film for a few minutes in the stand-off at the end, as it started to become too obnoxious for me. It seems pretty clear that they didn't have any dialogue written down for the actors, so they just kept screaming the same things louder and louder. This is an amateur's idea of how to raise tension in a scene, by merely raising the volume. It's a shame because there is some talent in the cast, but they are given little to work with. You'd think a movie with Jeff Bridges, Rosanna Arquette, and Andy Garcia (along with some other familiar faces) would be worth exploring but this is not at all.
The story of 8 Million Ways to Die is messy at best. Somehow, for no logical reason, the main character allows himself to get drawn deeper and deeper into a prostitution and drug plot. For some reason, he feels obligated to help these girls that have no good explanation for why they sought his assistance in the first place. It's treated like a big mystery, but from the moment you meet all the main characters, a 5-year-old could discern who was the main villain. While the specifics of his plot may be a bit surprising, they don't matter all that much. In fact, the few things they do in order to obfuscate who was behind the crimes in this movie didn't seem to have a logical purpose in the plot beyond a lame attempt to manufacture a mystery. There was literally only one scene where I had hope, for a fleeting instant, that 8 Million Ways to Die was actually going to be an interesting film that went down an unexpected path. Sadly, that turned out to be too much to hope for, and the movie is actually just a trainwreck that wasn't worth my time.
The story of 8 Million Ways to Die is messy at best. Somehow, for no logical reason, the main character allows himself to get drawn deeper and deeper into a prostitution and drug plot. For some reason, he feels obligated to help these girls that have no good explanation for why they sought his assistance in the first place. It's treated like a big mystery, but from the moment you meet all the main characters, a 5-year-old could discern who was the main villain. While the specifics of his plot may be a bit surprising, they don't matter all that much. In fact, the few things they do in order to obfuscate who was behind the crimes in this movie didn't seem to have a logical purpose in the plot beyond a lame attempt to manufacture a mystery. There was literally only one scene where I had hope, for a fleeting instant, that 8 Million Ways to Die was actually going to be an interesting film that went down an unexpected path. Sadly, that turned out to be too much to hope for, and the movie is actually just a trainwreck that wasn't worth my time.