‘Bad Men and the Devil’ is not your regular western…no sir! This short movie manages to compress in less than ten minutes the action you would see in a feature film, without skipping important details and leaving the viewer satisfied.
The story is set in the wild-west, in a saloon, where some cowboys drink and sit in their own particular manner. The plot changes when suddenly a new face walks into the bar. Next thing we know and see is the scene where a cowboy prepares his gun and has a tremendous dialogue with someone. That is about all we can share here… for more details, go watch the short.
The main character, Travis Lee Eller, is impersonating a badass cowboy, one that could easily fit in Tarantino’s ‘Hateful Eight’. He is mean, he is bad, he is agile, nothing goes unnoticed, he is the dominant power in this short and he is doing an amazing job.
The set is spectacular in its simplicity and reveals more than one could ask. Also, the sound editing is nicely done, especially the sounds of the storm enhancing the dark atmosphere. The dim lights and the perfect yet, awkward silence are creating an environment most directors would want in their movies but cannot get.
The dialogue, taken out of context as a piece of literature, or as part of a novel, is captivating. The main character manages to creep the viewer only through his own words and then to creep them more when he starts strolling around the saloon. From our point of view, Tino Luciano’s ‘Bad Men and the Devil’ is a good piece of cinematography, proving once again that you can, indeed, say more with less, keeping the artistic value unaltered in this process.
Written by Vlad A. G