Montana’s Bitterroot Valley provides the striking locations of “Trail of Justice,” an over-ambitious and amatetuerish Western with a few decent sequences that stand out amidst the clumsy plotting, bad to indifferent acting, stilted dialogue and mixed messaging.
It traipses from one plot throughline to the next, basically following some brothers and a fellow they rescue from outlaws, hounded by a widening cast of pursuers, sheltered by Blackfeet warriors, flirting with town gals and fending off town bullies plainly played by haven’t-shaved-yet college acting students.
Well, one hopes they’re in college. And that they study acting before trying this again.
“What’s a wildflower like you doin’ with a tumbleweed like this?”
I’m not interested in singling anybody out, but I will allow myself the indulgence of an eye-roll about one particularly inept scene. A rancher with a past comes into an empty church, starts a “Bless me father, for I have sinned” speech with no priest there, laments his Civil War indiscetions with a convoluted tale of rejecting the Army of Northern Virginia to join the Union Army and “butcher rebs” — requiring a strained, overreaching flashback, all to set up how evil he is and whatever is to come.
It’s a scripted dead end, one among many.
Bad acting, middling makeup (few players look like they’re more than 15 minutes from their last shower), grindingly-tin-eared dialogue, on at least one occasion, recited by a PeeWee-voiced Blackfoot.
“You intrude on sacred ground.”
The best use anyone will have for “Trail of Justice” on video is for its location scouting properties. Pretty country, already the filming location for the many “Yellowstone” incarnations on TV. Better Westerns could come from this, probably not from this cast and crew. But maybe they’ll prove me wrong.
Rating: PG-13 (Sequences of Violence)
Cast: Robert A. Rogers III, Luke Valimont, Hollee Kolenda, Gideon Valimont, Abbie Valimont, Andrew Knoll, Brody Severson, Stephen Jarvis
Credits: Directed by Nick DeBoer, scripted by Chase Jessop. A Lionsgate release.
Running time: 1:45
