Willem Dafoe And Christoph Waltz Are Teaming Up For A Western

 Here’s a fun one uniting three screen greats. Oscar winner Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds) and Oscar nominee Willem Dafoe (Spider-Man) are set to star in Western thriller Dead For a Dollar from legendary filmmaker and Western aficionado Walter Hill (The Warriors).

Hill will write and direct the feature which is set in New Mexico Territory, Chihuahua, in 1897. The story will follow Max Borlund (Waltz), a famed bounty hunter, hired to find and return Rachel Price, the politically progressive wife of Nathan Price, a successful Santa Fe businessman. Max is told she has been kidnapped by an African American army deserter, Elijah Jones, and is being held for ransom in Mexico. When Max goes south of the border he soon runs across his sworn enemy, expatriate American Joe Cribbens (Dafoe), a professional gambler, sometime outlaw, who Max had tracked down and sent to prison years before.

If there is one genre that, when done right, hits better than any other, it's Westerns. I'll always be interested in a classic, bounty hunter inspired story like the one described above, but the cast is what really draws me in here. Waltz obviously has already been proven to play a great Western bounty hunter in Django, which is both a good and a bad thing. It's great because we know it can work, but bad because I feel like they will need to go to lengths to make sure it doesn't resemble the character of King Shultz at all. 

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Dafoe is a bit more a wildcard in this regard, but he is such a fantastic fit for a western. That worn-down, rugged face with more lines than a Dolphins Assistant Coach locker room. PERFECT fit! Director Walter Hill hasn't been doing a ton of work over the past decade, but he made his bones reviving the genre, so who is better to take on a crew and project like this. 

FYI, here are my top westerns ever made. You can find out where to stream them at MOVIERANKINGS.NET