Gunfight at Rio Bravo 2

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TAKEN FROM RIO BRAVO is an indie western that turns out to be a sequel to ASSAULT ON RIO BRAVO, which I haven't seen, and features a couple of returning characters. I don't feel like I missed much there. This is pretty lamentable stuff, just about passable as a B-grade kind of outing, involving an outlaw gang who kidnap a number of women and the heroes who team up to get them back again. As with most low budget films in this genre, the landscape impresses but the performances don't, particularly the wooden Nevsky. Don 'The Dragon' Wilson has a small role as an Indian tracker and Cynthia Rothrock has an even smaller role, so tiny that I actually missed it.

Now, the synopsis for the movie actually sounded interesting enough to make me decide to sit down and watch the movie. Usually I am not particularly keen on Western movies, but do watch one every now and again. However, I have to say that I had some expectations to the movie from what the synopsis presented. However, writers Craig Hamann and Alexander Nevsky dropped the ball here, because the movie proved to be a massive swing and a miss. Granted, I have not watched the 2023 Western "Gunfight at Rio Bravo", so I don't know how much of this 2024 sequel was lost on me as I didn't know what transpired in the first movie. Of the entire cast ensemble in the movie, I was only familiar with Don Wilson, Matthias Hues and Cynthia Rothrock. The acting performances in the movie were for the most parts fair enough, but then there was Alexander Nevsky. Right, well Cynthia Rothrock as a woman in 1874 performing martial arts didn't exactly come off as being a particularly realistic or plausible thing. It was just such a poorly mixture of martial arts and Western, and it didn't work. And having Don Wilson, whom is part Japanese, play a native American, well... Director Joe Cornet didn't deliver an impressive Western experience, and this was a movie that will just as quietly fade into oblivion as it quietly managed to sneak in under the radar. Not even if you are a diehard Western fan then I wouldn't recommend you to sit down and watch "Taken From Rio Bravo". My rating of this 2024 farce of a Western movie lands on a very, very generous two out of ten stars.

This western has all the ingredients to be a classic but somehow it manages to fall woefully short. The music and opening credits hark back to the golden age of westerns. The scenery and landscapes give it a great atmospheric feel. The characters are interesting enough. It's easy to distinguish between the good and the bad guys. The costumes appear historically accurate (I can't vouch for the weapons) and there are throw-backs to the Civil War - I can quite believe some participants were still wearing their uniforms 7 or 8 years after the war. There's even an Indian, a few Mexicans and some Comancheros thrown in for good measure. The plot of white slaves being traded into Mexico from the Southern States is not one I'd seen explored before and was an interesting twist to the routine 'revenge' story. The female characters were pleasing to the eye without detracting from the story. To be fair, I think they got away with it pretty tamely! There is also a bit of humour too with the town doc being made sheriff - this could have been explored more The action and fight scenes come fast enough but unfortunately they are over-the-top and our 'hero' is too much of a 'super hero' taking on numerous bandits all at once. The villains themselves are just not bad enough. The main villain wouldn't have looked out of place in a 'Carry On' film! I'm not familiar with Alexander Nevski but he's big, I mean BIG! I felt sorry for his horse! To my mind he was just too big to be realistic Towards the end the continuity goes awry as if they're trying to wrap everything up in a rush - perhaps they were running out of money? I was glad I stuck with it until the end to find out that the main protagonist is based on a real character - a Russian that fought for the Union during the ACW. I need to find out more about him. If you're looking for a classic western this is not it - although it could have been.