Hair-Trigger Casey: A dusty, weird little B-western

Is it worth your time?

Look, if you’re the kind of person who enjoys the rhythm of old B-westerns—where the plot is just a flimsy excuse to get people on horses—you’ll have a fine time. If you need logic, pacing, or actors who aren't just reading lines off a barn door, stay far away. 🤠

Casey comes home, expects a nap, and gets a fight. It’s the oldest story in the book. The movie feels like it was filmed in a frantic weekend, and I mean that in the most charmingly incompetent way possible.

The Smuggling Angle

It’s strange seeing a western pivot into a story about smuggling people. It feels like the writers got bored halfway through writing a generic cattle rustling script and decided to spice it up. It doesn't really land, but it makes the movie stand out from something like The Fighting Buckaroo, which plays it way straighter.

There is this one scene where a character just stands by a fence, looking vaguely concerned for about a full minute. I think he forgot his lines. The camera operator just kept rolling, probably hoping he’d remember to do something interesting.

Observations from the dirt

• Starlight the Horse definitely has more screen presence than half the human cast.
• The dialogue sounds like it was written by someone who had only ever heard people talk in telegrams.
• I’m pretty sure I saw the same rock formation in the background of three different 'locations' in the same chase scene.
• The villains are so cartoonishly evil they might as well have been wearing 'I'm a bad guy' signs.

Everything about the action feels weightless. Punches don't connect. Gunshots sound like someone hitting a piece of metal with a wooden spoon. It’s weirdly hypnotic.

If you enjoy that feeling of a movie just sort of falling apart at the seams, you’ll dig this. It’s got a messy energy that Bombshell definitely lacks, though for completely different reasons. It’s not trying to be high art, and it fails at being a great western, but it manages to be a solid time-waster.

I left feeling like I’d spent the afternoon in the sun without a hat. A little dizzy, a little dusty, and mostly just glad to be back indoors. 🌵