Continuing my goal of watching every Acid Western mentioned in the Wikipedia article that I can "Netflix," I have now viewed Bad Company starring Jeff Bridges and Barry Brown. At first, I was pretty skeptical of the whole movie. It felt a little bit like a somber Disney-esqe western. Mostly due to the fact that the beginning of the movie is a mostly harmless rag-tag gang of thieves/young boys. And there's plenty of tomfoolery to be found. Although, I definitely should have known better to have insulted the movie in such a way. It creates a very innocent bubble that we can exist inside of, where to a degree, we are fooled by the characters into thinking that things are going to be all right. But things are not all right, as they head west, bad things happen. The film is never very blatant. Letting events speak for themselves, rarely undercutting it with music or any kind of bias. I'm not going to avoid spoilers, and I want to mention that when the ten year old Boog gets his head blown off. I was actually really fucking shocked. There's violence in the film, but until that point, it's rather petty. Jeff Bridges plays the "leader" of the gang who soon finds himself a little in over his head but the film follows Dixon (Barry Brown) who refrains from really committing any serious crimes. Brown is actually a really great actor letting the subtext of his character constantly simmer. I was actually pretty bummed when I found out he killed himself five years after the film came out. Bad Company is a subtle western. I can see why it hasn't really found a place. There's nothing about it that is particularly striking right off the bat. It sinks in. It is a beautiful film both visually and thematically... but it is also a quiet one.
Even Zeb over there is a little disappointed how hard it was to find a screenshot of this movie... and this is the one I find...
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