Former NBA player Karl Malone should have kept his day job. No, this is not an epic biopic of painter Norman Rockwell, or the "Somebody's Watching Me" one-hit wonder from the 1980's. This weak western is more horrible than you can imagine.
Randy Gleave, looking like he is auditioning for the dinner theater production of "Jim Morrison: The Paris Years," plays Porter Rockwell, a long-haired, bearded friend of Mormons Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Smith is killed and Rockwell moves to Utah, where he must deal with the same land grabbers who had Smith and others gunned down back in Illinois. Rockwell becomes marshal, and rumor has it he cannot be killed because of his long hair. The end features a final showdown with the lead land grabber, and a snake pit.
The villains are broadly written and played, you expect them to be described as "nefarious" and "dastardly" while they twirl their mustaches and tie virgins to railroad tracks. The film is very cheap, I swear the film makers used the same log cabin to film every character's exteriors, no matter if they lived in Illinois or Utah. The costuming seems to consist of actors bringing what they thought was old from home as modern hairstyles and clothing can often be spotted. The rest of the exterior shots were done at a state park somewhere, and you can see modern doorknobs, and even a modern city in the background of one shot, as the villain describes the frontier town he has arrived in as "quaint." The opening scenes show a child gunned down, and Rockwell is hit on by TWO preteen girls trying to find a husband- both scenes are squirm-inducing.
The whole film is Rockwell getting shot at, then killing whoever was responsible. Malone looks clueless as to how he got stuck in this. As Rockwell's friend Elijah, he shoots and runs around, but his character's only purpose seems to be to give Malone something to do onscreen. There is an embarrassing vignette where Rockwell and Elijah are in a play together, and Rockwell forgets his lines. I think the writer-director was trying to be funny, but my jaw was agape in how bad this was, and how long it dragged out. For fun, count the number of characters who use colorful words like "ain't" and "reckon" non-stop. The editing feels like one of those nine hour TV mini-series edited down to an hour and a half, then released on video as a "movie," with narration added to fill in the gaps.
This movie is hard to find on video for a reason, it is awful. Stay away from "Rockwell." Also known as "Rockwell: A Legend of the Wild West."
Stats:
(1994) 105 min. (1/10)
-Written and Directed by Richard Lloyd Dewey
-Cast: Randy Gleave, Scott Christopher, Karl Malone, Michael Flynn, Kennedy Kevin, Meilani Paul, Lance C. Williams, Michael Ruud, Shantal Hiatt, Linda Gilbert, John Bozung, Scott McMillan, Paul Mugerian
(R)
Media Viewed: VHS
