Customer Reviews

Shadowheart

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(15)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

Shadowheart promises to be a thrilling western about a man who returns for vengeance on his father's murder, only to "discover a Native American world where justice has no nameand vengeance rides in the shadows." From this, Shadowheart sounds very promising. As other reivewers correctly note, however, the film falls far, far from its description. The story is slow going (taking about 30 wandering minutes to really take shape), and the meeting of this Native American tribe (of two Native Americans) is, at best, a wandering side plot to a wandering main plot.

THE BEST: If there is anything that brings Shadowheart to life, it is the wonderful acting by Angus MacFayden (Saw V, Californication) who portrays an absolutely WONDERFUL villian in the murderous mayor Will Tunney. MacFayden undoes at least a little bit of the damage done by the overall stiff acting and awkward dialogue ("Dead or alive? I prefer...dead!") It is not exaggeration to say that if MacFayden hadn't been cast in the role he was, I'd have given the film two less stars.

THE WORST: What really killed this film is the very wandering plot (guy sees his father die, fights in the civil war, comes back to hometown, gets married, attempts to lock up fathers killder...). In addition, the dialogue and plot line has a bit too many cliches for me.

My reccomendation? With its meandering plot, dearth of suspense, and cheesy dialogue, you should pass.

Shadowheart is the story about a boy growing up in the west who witnesses his father murdered by a callous man played by Angus Macfadyen who is hell bent in becoming a land baron by robbing people of their land at whatever the cost.

James Conners played by Justin Ament goes off to grow up and joins the ranks in the Civil War, witnessing horrific acts and learning to survive. He returns to avenge his father and marry the girl he left behind, Mary Cooper played by Marnie Alton.

They marry but do not live for long in happiness for she is killed and thanks to Native American Indians, James Conners in the end avenges his father, finding peace and living up to the image of Shadowheart, a transformed individual thanks to his experiences while living with his Navajo friends.

The movie is predictable, the characters are not well developed, and while the filming scenes are enjoyable, we found this movie lacking the style of great westerns.

My husband I watched this movie last night. I don't "book review" movies because that information can be found in other reviews and the product description. We love westerns, have watched them for over 50 years, and have a great respect for the older, and more recent, great ones in the genre, such as Shane, High Noon, Gunfight at the OK Corral, Unforgiven, Open Range, among others. Shadowheart cannot be mentioned in the same sentence with great westerns. My husband gave it 1 ½ stars; I had to give it one star because 0 stars cannot be posted. Here is why:

The first 10 minutes of the movie lays out the plot, which does catch your attention. Unfortunately, after the initial promise, from then on everything goes straight downhill, whether it is the story (predictable), dialogue (leaves a lot to be desired), acting (fair to poor), or directing (out to lunch). I personally didn't think it was possible to muddle the themes of revenge and redemption; however, this movie does a fairly good job of it.

The movie is relentlessly depressing. It starts out badly, and from there, it just gets worse. In that respect only, it strongly reminded me of an excellent 1967 movie called Welcome to Hard Times. Otherwise, there is nothing about Shadowheart, the title being explained in a completely confusing way, that is funny, entertaining, uplifting, or fathomable, for that matter. To compound everything, there are blatant attempts to interject revisionist history or political correctness, either with the settlers or the Indians, which have the result of placing the characters in situations doing actions that are entirely unbelievable.

There is no cinematography to speak of, so even if you wanted to just look at the scenery, that isn't an option. The movie isn't worth renting, much less purchasing. I was truly sorry to have spent two hours watching it. It will not be placed in our DVD library, and I cannot think of anyone I dislike enough to give it to.

Shadowheart was an interesting movie for me. I liked the story overall, set in early west New Mexico, pre/post Civil War, where a young boy leaves a gritty growing town only to return to deal with his angst from his childhood and to cleanse himself from his difficulties he went through during the Civil War.

The movie itself is a little slow paced, yet the story itself is engaging with a few glimpses into some great potential. The actors do a great job in their parts. You will recognize a few of them. Telling is the work of Angus MacFadyen (who played Robert the Bruce in Braveheart). He is the bad guy in the movie, and you really get this gut wrenching feeling about the character, so he really does a great job. Frankly, we get the bad guys always looking smart or clean, but this guy is just an ugly mess. Great performance.

The movie is soft on language and not much if any gore. Although the violence is not completely off screen, there is no spurting blood everywhere when someone gets shot, so at least, you are more into the story than the gore.

Justin Ament is fairly new to me, so I was impressed with his acting, very serious brooding character who has flashes of insight on where he needs to be as a person.

I liked this movie and rated it a 4 for overall, yet the story line itself would be a 5. It made me feel a little like Unforgiven as far as the feel of the screen work. It could have used a little more on the wide view or panorama view to get a larger feel. I think it would make a great TV pilot and would make a good TV show like Lonesome Dove.

The only negative I felt that there were too many lines to follow, his childhood, the Civil War, the run in with the Indians, the train and the bad guy. More focus by taking one of the items out would have helped.

In a genre as cliched as the western the staple revenge turn of the story is almost a given. So while Shadowheart doesn't exactly blow the doors off your preconceptions, those open to a good yarn told at a solid pace will find something to enjoy. The cast of young fresh faces is peppered with some authenticity by Sadler, Howard, Napier in their small roles. While the production design could use a few more pounds of dirt and there are moments where the music just doesn't fit, I found myself engaged and fairly wrapped up in this tale of the wild west. The authentic Navajo spoken by the Native Americans was a nice touch, and this movie serves up a "cartoon" classic bad guy in a good way as well. Great rental for western fans as they will get mostly what they came for. Not exactly the epic the box states but still light years better than the likes of SILVERADO.

This movie was very well casted and allowed the viewing audience a peak at what it was like to live during the time of the western frontier. Not only needing to be on constant alert for indians, but also fellow townspeople who surrounded themselves with an unsavory regiment of killers and men with no morals in order to take over a town and everyone in it. The quality of the DVD was excellent and I am very satisfied with this purchase.
shadow Heart touched my soul in a way no other movie has to date. This is a 5 thumbs up movie!

"He came for revenge...he found redemption" is the tag-line for this movie. I won't spoil the film, but as far as that tag-line goes...not really. And that is my main problem with this film. It had no idea what it was trying to say. It leads you in the direction of God and redemption, completely ignores it, and pays you off with...well, I can't say without putting spoilers in the review. I'll just say, the ending should have been different, considering the actions and words of the characters. At the same time I was afraid that this would be a movie that over preachy, and it was not.

The plot, briefly, is typical Western fare. A preacher is killed, the son goes off and comes back years later for revenge.

Cinematically, this feels like a Halmark or Disney channel made-for-T.V. movie. Having grown up on the films of Sergio Leone, I have a love of Westerns where you can feel the grit. Where you can smell the stink coming off the actors on the screen. In "Shadowheart", everyone has perfectly shampooed hair and bright clean clothes. Even after a fight, characters have perfectly and artistically applied dirt and blood to their clothes. The most hilarious is the main character's glued on mustache when he returns to town, to let you know he's a "tough guy".

The writing and acting, for the most part, is fairly dreadful. The "bad guys" are the most hilarious of caricatures. Black Bart meets Yosemite Sam. The Navajo are portrayed as both the "noble savage" and as the "magical healers". Two stereotypes for the price of one. The railroad surveyors are hilarious anachronisms.

The only saving grace for this movie is that, in spite of its relatively safe PG-13 approach to filming and story, there is a surprising amount of darkness to the film. This is what actually drew me in to the story and kept me from turning it off after 10 minutes. Still, given all of countless great westerns that exist, I would put this film way down the list of movies in that genre that should be seen. It wasn't entirely dreadful. 2.5 stars, rounding down.

Well, where do I start with this review? This movie had great scenery, but the acting was bad. It was more a made for T.V. movie. The plot started out great, with a Preacher, and sweet son, and then came the bad guy, who took over the town. By the middle of the movie it became more cheesy than anything good. I would say this would qualify for a Hallmark movie, my husband hated this movie and made rude comments about it being cheesy throughout the whole thing. I thought it was okay, there was no sex, and only one curse word that I could remember, yet there was some violence, not bad considering the normal violent movies. Although James did seek revenge in this movie, it was just deserved. I hated the bad guy too, and I guess that means he played his part well. If you want to view this movie, just rent it, not worth seeing over. This movie was kind of preachy, but that's okay, it's just that this movie was actually really cheesy, but worth at least one viewing.

I like the western film genre a lot. Most of the films are about a west that never existed, but every once in a while you'll see something that's entertaining.

"ShadowHeart" is the sort of film you might see on the Hallmark Hall of Fame Channel. The script is okay, and the acting is actually pretty good. What makes it sort of an average film is the rather slow pace at which the story unfolds and lack of character development. A lot of this film, especially the rather mawkish beginning, seems to be one establishing shot after another.

I watched this dvd in two sittings. During the first sitting, I got through the first half- hour or so. After that I lost interest. At that point, the Justin Ament character, James Conners, had returned to his hometown as a bounty hunter and proceeded to demand justice for his father's murder ten years or so previously. At that point, Ament basically looked like a kid whom someone slapped a fake handlebar mustache on, and outfitted with typical cowboy gear. And way too laid back.

It seemed improbable. Someone hell-bent on revenge or justice would have had a better plan. In retrospect, I guess the James Conners character was supposed to be such a tough guy that he inspired fear in anyone he came into contact with. That really didn't come across too well. The end result wasn't due to any lack of acting skill on Ament's part; it had more to do with the script itself.

So, at that point you had to use your imagination, because the film wasn't working very well. Which was why I turned the thing off and did something else.

During the second sitting, I picked up where I left off and watched if the pace would pick up. Eventually, it did, and the story started to unfold at a faster pace. I'm not going to go into a plot synopsis, because you probably wouldn't be interested in reading it anyway. Besides, if you really want to know what the story was about, you can read one of the other reviews.

The film managed to hold my interest to its conclusion, but to be honest, I really didn't have anything else to watch anyway. By the end of the film, I thought that "ShadowHeart" was about a B minus western.

The most notable aspect of this film was the actor Angus Macfadyen , best known for his previous role as Robert Bruce in the Mel Gibson Film, "BraveHeart". His acting style in portraying the villain Will Tunney reminded me a lot of Rod Steiger. I really liked his performance - it was fun to watch.

"ShadowHeart" isn't a film I'd want to watch over and over and over again. It's not "The Wild Bunch," or even "The Hired Hand".

There's not a lot of action here... And certainly nothing to shock a viewing audience. However, if you're a hardcore fan of the western film genre, this family-oriented film might be worth a look.

It is pretty rare when a Western genre film can come up with something that you haven't seen before. When a young James Connor witnesses his preacher father (an excellent William Sadler) murdered by a pyschotic land baron (Angus Macfayden in a dominating performance) he vows to return one day to the town of Legend to seek his revenge leaving behind the girl of his dreams who leaves him with a yellow ribbon to remember her by. The years pass and James Connor survives the horrors of the Civil War to return to Legend to fulfill his destiny. But all doesn't turn out as one might suspect. With a cast of excellent actors, fine writing and outstanding direction by Dean Alioto will pull you in and keep you engrossed in this excellent film.