The Showdown (2009)

As Good As It Gets

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

This film has the worst script, worst acting I have ever seen. I could only take 10 minutes before shutting it off.What I find even worse than the movie itself is that the DVD cover boasts that it is in the tradition of High Noon and Dances with Wolves and soon to be a classic. Even though I only lasted 10 minutes a blind person could spot flaws in the set. The dance hall saloon was lit up as bright as the Las Vegas strip even though it is supposedly lit by oil lanterns. I have a collection of over 600 westerns and I can tell you this one is NOT part of it. Save your money and especially your time and avoid this movie.

The Showdown. I will pit this Western against any other movie world wide that cost $100,000 USD to produce. I have read complaints about the sound of the guns and the cleanliness of the saloon. Please! give me a break this movie was filmed 100% in Central Illinois not on some multi million dollar sound stage. Every outdoor scene was filmed outdoors (OMG what a novel idea). Real horses not some special trained stunt horses. Every actor did his or her own stunts. Granted it may not have been the best western ever made and some of the acting sucked. But the men and women that acted in it never claimed to be Hollywood actors. I dare any of the complainers that ragged on this movie to make a better one for the same money. The fact that none of the actors have received more then a copy of the movie in exchange for their performances doesn't change the facts that each one put in a lot of hard work creating this film. I bought it after seeing it. I am very proud of a Film made in little old Peoria.

I sat down to watch this with my uncle and father, both of them just love westerns. However this is more like a 'folks in the woods' rather than a true 'western'. The acting was truly bad, it looked and felt like an amateur stage show, even the guns sounded like starter pistols.Some of the lines in the film are so bad that they are funny, if only the actors were not trying to be serious! After watching this we all heartily agreed that it was one of the worst films ever made.If you are a fan of westerns I recommend that you sit down to one of your Audie Murphy westerns from the 1950's and watch that instead.Don't waste your time with this one folks.

This is a really great western. Hard to believe it was shot entirely in Illinois. I am from Texas and it sure fooled me. This is a truly wonderful experience and I was pleasantly surprised at how good it was. We need more of these independent films that show that people can make a movie an act of love and dedication. You can see that the folks that made this movie really cared about doing the best job possible and without being paid or having some kind of contract. It was created in their spare time and definitely took many hours of their free time to make it. Again all I can say is job well done folks, this is truly a labor of love. Hope to see more of these great endeavors.