In A Valley Of Violence (2016) **1/2

Like all Ti West films, I found In A Valley Of Violence underwhelming. With a title like the one it has, I expected something more grim and grimy. Ethan Hawke is great, as always (and the dog is real cute), but I found most of the other performances lacking (particularly the inconsistent accents). 

Jeff Grace’s score is a mostly solid Morricone tribute (with some modern flourishes) but the cinematography is a bit too clean for my tastes. I appreciate West’s attempt at injecting humor into the film but most of the time it didn’t work for me. It all just comes off as either a lesser Italian Western or a Tarantino facsimile.

I like that IAVOV is a simple story and it’s a decent western but, as someone who has seen quite a few of them, I have to say there are many better ones. For a truly violent (brutal, in fact)—and superior—western I recommend John Hillcoat’s 2005 film The Proposition (my favorite western of the last 20 years).

You can find my Ti West Feature Films Ranked list here.