Dust

Manchevski thinks he's much more clever than he really is in this 'postmodern Western', attempting to reconfigure Americans vs. Natives as...Turks vs. Macedonians, in what I assume is the Second Balkan War. Except the cowboys play freedom fighters on either respective side. And this story is paralleled with that of the modern-day, where an old woman recounts the story of these two cowboys to a...petty thief. Which acts as the narrative device. Messy, stilted, disjointed, bad.

Mancheveski directed one of my all-time favorite films, *Before the Rain*, and Westerns are my favorite genre. So I had high hopes for this "Macedonian Western." It was a huge disappointment. The plot is loose-jointed and implausible, the acting is basic, and the level of violence is so high that the film more aptly should be named "Blood." The number of scenes in which someone points a gun at someone else's head is surprisingly high.