Red Rock West

Film noir persists long past its "golden era" of the 1940s and '50s because the forces that created it — the sense of futility generated by capitalism's lopsided benefits package — continue to exist. But noir has moved from the dark decay of wet city streets to the bleak openness of the West. The American frontier is no longer a rich, vital land waiting for wagon trainloads of pioneers or plucky individuals to conquer it; now it's a vast, dark, lonely prairie, more hopeless than hostile. Recent "neo-noirs" like «True Romance» have leavened this hopelessness with appropriate dollops of black humor, but the real standout in this style is John Dahl's dusty western tale, Red Rock West…

Nicolas Cage plays Michael Williams, a drifter who wanders into rural Red Rock, Wyoming looking for work. A local bar owner named Wayne (J.T. Walsh) mistakes him for a hit man, "Lyle from Dallas," whom Wayne has hired to kill his wife. Wayne offers him a stack of cash–"half now, half later"– Michael doesn't correct him and takes the money. Michael then visits Wayne's wife, Suzanne (Lara Flynn Boyle) and attempts to warn her that her life is in danger—instead of killing her. She then makes a tempting counteroffer to him. Michael, knowing that the longer he stays in town the more danger he'll get into, continually tries to leave town, with no success. He complicates matters when he becomes romantically involved with Suzanne, and has to dodge bullets when "Lyle from Dallas" (Dennis Hopper) finally does show up.

When a promised job for Texan Michael fails to materialise in Wyoming, Mike is mistaken by Wayne to be the hitman he hired to kill his unfaithful wife, Suzanne. Mike takes full advantage of the situation, collects the money and runs. During his getaway, things go wrong, and soon get worse when he runs into the real hitman, Lyle.

Acclaimed writer/director Jon Favreau stars as a struggling actor about to enter a weirdly comic twilight zone. After agreeing to deliver a mysterious suitcase to a remote desert truck stop in exchange for $27K, John Person (Favreau) finds himself trapped in a bizarre world of unusual characters. Is the whole town mad, or are the loony locals the only sane things about this strange parallel universe called The Big Empty?

Helen is a young woman running a hairdressing salon; Bob is her boyfriend and local radio DJ; Honda is a mute kid who's secretly taping people's conversation and Smokey is Honda's sister who sings at local bar. New guy in town is the mysterious Martin, who shares some dark history with Helen and observes her from afar at first. Honda falls in love with Helen and starts taping her conversations with Bob, and that leads to reactivation of the Helen-Martin relationship.

In The Big Country Gregory Peck plays a seafaring man who heads west to marry Carroll Baker, the daughter of rancher Charles Bickford. Bickford is currently embroiled in a water-rights feud with covetous Burl Ives, so both he and his daughter are hoping that Peck can take care of himself. But Peck, who doesn't belief in fisticuffs, appears to be a coward, especially when challenged by Bickford's cocksure foreman Charlton Heston. The far-from-cowardly Peck decides to distance himself from the machismo overload at the Bickford spread, settling for a romance with headstrong schoolmarm Jean Simmons, whose water-rich lands are being fought over by the two warring ranchers. When Jean is kidnapped by Ives' no-good son Chuck Connors, Peck decides to take action.

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Michael Portillo explores Canada, armed with his Appleton's 1899 Guidebook.