Cassidy Red (2017) User Reviews

A Ballad of Love and Hate

[nogodnomasters · 4/10 · 14 February 2018]

Cassidy Red (Abby Eiland), who is blonde for 2/3 of the film, is the daughter of a John and a prostitute. She grows up and gets messed up in love making the wrong guy angry. There is s betrayal of trust and blah blah blah...a chick flick that is also a western. A piano player narrates the story.

The film was neither a great love story or a great western. Pretty good for a college project.

Guide: No swearing, sex. or nudity.

Nice visuals, but the story was a let down.

[M85ALIVE · 4/10 · 26 February 2019]

Surprisingly nice cinematography. I've been going through a lot of the indie films on Prime and this one stood out with its moody lighting, nice sets, competently shot.

But by the end I just didn't have that satisfying feeling after watching a revenge style film. The glaring problem for me was the fact that her lover wasn't killed...so theres absolutely no reason to take revenge on this man, well he was locked up by the sheriff, but without his death all the compellingness of the film is just gone for me, I stopped caring, plus the flashback of how their love came about didn't feel real, authentic. I couldn't feel anything in those scenes so that I could get behind the protagonist, then theres the reveal he's not dead......so that's it, I checked out, such a shame. I wanted to like it, I love westerns, but not his one.

IMDB is full of haters and people who know nothing

[ditruter · 6/10 · 8 July 2022]

Good acting, good history and good aesthetic. Good lighting, good music, good photography, that's innegable. Only who don´t know nothing can say other thing, or only a hater.

Perhaps it is not the best movie in the world, but it has all the ingredients for seeing it and enjoying it.

Cassidy Boring

[nammage · 3/10 · 30 November 2019]

It starts with all the wonderful clichés. A person walks into a saloon, face, and other body parts obscured, and talks to the barkeep-voice obscured, too. It's revealed a minute or so later: it's a woman. No duh. The body frame said that much. Then a man walks into the saloon, face also obscured as if both these people warrant such a thing in the beginning of a film with actors/characters no one really has ever heard of or established storywise; especially since it's the beginning of the film.

As with so many low budget films: the composition plays over much of the dialogue and turning up the volume doesn't really help. And, if it doesn't have subtitles and you can't read lips...well...kind of makes you want to skip those parts or stop watching all together. The film is setup in story form by way of narration (cliché) where a piano player is telling a story to a woman on a stage; think she's a prostitute, or something...don't really remember. Then in narration over a story told in a sort of flashback it then goes into another flashback telling about the main character and her friend, how they met, who they are to each other, explaining the bad guys etc., and it's all just a really big mess of storytelling. One of the most boring tales of revenge.

Personally, I felt the photography and set design was fine. The acting was mildly okay, not the worst I've seen but nothing too special, either. The beginning kind of paints the female lead as a 'bad girl' type but with the implication that she once was a 'good girl'. I didn't see that connection. She was never shown as being a sweet innocent girl who then was turned into a bad girl by the things that she went through in the flashback scenes. She was shown as a strong-willed person who stood up for those she felt was being wronged by others; which is good but there's nothing innocent about that, in my opinion.

I felt that the worst thing about the film was the composition. Not that it was awful but for the mere fact it drowns out the dialogue. 40 minutes in the characters Jake (Jason Grasl) and Joe (Abby Eiland) are laying down outside next to a fire having a talk after sex and it's difficult to make out the conversation based on the fact the composition is so loud. Another problem with the composition: it plays through 99% of the entire film and the in between moving-along scenes the composition is quieter but in the scenes where the dialogue is important it's difficult to hear anything but the composition.

Overall, it's not the worst Western I've ever scene but it is the most boring and I'm one of the few people who disliked "High Noon" (1952) based on the fact that I found it boring. Also, you notice how some films explain what's going to or did happen before or after a scene? Not this movie. No, for the first time (to my recollection) -- and I've seen thousands of films -- this film explains the plot to the viewer consistently every 10-15 minutes until the very end. The opening credits were pretty good, though. That's something.

Low key...very, very low key

[Call-Me-Mr-Smith · 2/10 · 10 November 2019]

This move moves lethargically, like a turtle on Thorazine. It is best described as a thinking man's western, just, in this case, it's a thinking woman...or rather, a girl. A girl who doesn't watch westerns, and prefers Glee. It does have some nice cinematography though, and we see Arizona landscape in all its splendor. Even the sets are quite ok for a low budget western. And now the bad... the story is of revenge, revenge at the stray viewer who stumbles upon it on the Prime...The creators were aware of the western form and canons, but were not able to substantiate it, or infuse any genuine soul in this project. Oh, and did I mention that, it is lacking energy until the very end, when it is released in a somewhat farcical way. Acting is largely amateurish, making it annoying at times. The sound follows closely. I would give it 3 stars were it not for the fake upvoting, so, for the sake of fairness, 2/10.

one more for trash can

[sandcrab277 · 1/10 · 12 May 2018]

This must be the 10th indie i've seen lately that stinks to high heaven...its not even worth wasting words on...skip it for something, well anything would be better

Perfect for someone in, or who lost their love.

[ptsj-music · 7/10 · 10 January 2020]

A romantic western told in retrospective about young love to be lost. The story isn't much though it's nicely told. If the writing were as good as the pictures and visual telling, the directing, acting, casting, costumes and perhaps above all, the music, this could have been a real pearl. Not a bad try - not at all, and probably perfect for someone in, or who lost their love.

Absolutely loved it.

[melbrooker-801-173917 · 10/10 · 15 May 2018]

It's a little off for your typical western, but I really enjoyed this movie, and the story especially. Worth the watch if you're into westerns

Slightly better than the rating indicates

[kuaran · 6/10 · 26 September 2023]

I oftentimes check imdb ratings before watching the movie, for in most of the cases ratings give a pretty good estimation of the quality of the movie. For some reason, I started to watch this movie even if the rating is fairly low, and I was surprised of the quality of the movie. Story, cast, directing and overall quality of the movie was actually fairly good. It did not feel like a waste of time at all.

Having said that, there is something simplistic or hard-boild in the movie, including some of the characters, and that is likely to make some people critical about their reviews. At the same time I can't help seeing something artistic in this movie. I kind of enoyed its simplicity and slow pace.

So, my point is that the oveall quality of this movie may be better than the ratings it has got. I would have expected this to be rated somewhere in the region of 5.5 or even higher. In all, this movie is worth watching. In spite of its obvious clichés, it brings some novel nuances to the Western genre.

Lyrical Western about love, hate, sacrifice and redemption

[Wuchakk · 7/10 · 8 April 2024]

The firecracker daughter (Abby Eiland) of an alcoholic gunslinger and a prostitute makes an enemy of the local mogul in southern Arizona (David Thomas Jenkins). When her beloved is captured under trumped-up charges and feared dead (Jason Grasl), she has to turn to her lousy father (Rick Cramer) in order to set things a'right.

"Cassidy Red" (2017) is an artistic Indie with a reverent tone, great score, nice cinematography, decent no-name actors and authentic Southwest locations. This was Matt Knudsen's only film as writer/director; he usually works in the camera/electrical department. Despite its kickstarter origins, the movie worked for me as a moving arty ballad rooted in a romantic triangle with an Old West milieu.

Despite the nod to "Hannie Caulder" (and its unacknowledged remake, "6 Guns"), the story & style smack of originality with the setting switching back-and-forth from 1899, 1874 and 1863, although 1874 is the main setting described above.

Eiland does well as the no-nonsense protagonist. Also notable on the feminine front is Lola Kelly (Rowena), Jessy Knudsen (Quinn) and Alyssa Elle Steinacker (Young Joe).

The film runs 1 hour, 31 minutes, and was shot in Old Tucson and the nearby Sonoran Desert with some stuff done in Santa Clarita, north of Los Angeles.

GRADE: B/B-