Trail of Vengeance

Sometimes a cowgirl has to spill some blood to set things right, so get ready for a violent good time with the superior historical western Trail of Vengeance, directed by Johnny Remo with a script by Remo and Daniel Backman. Based on true stories of the Old West, the film opens in 1875, where the menacing Colonel Davis (Jeff Fahey) is planning to run for senator. He has enlisted his murderous henchmen, lead by Frank (Eric Nelsen) and including rapist Zeke (James Landry Hebert), to hunt down a group of men known as the “Woods”. These were men who secretly went undercover during the Civil War for the Pinkerton detective agency, all of whom used code names where their last names ended in “wood”.

Colonel Davis needs these men found and killed, as all of them know way too much about the unspeakable deeds that occurred during the war. So when loving frontiersman Caleb (Jeremy Sumpter) gets back from the mercantile run by Hoko (Graham Greene) with a new shovel and a special gift for his newly pregnant wife, Katherine Atherton (Rumer Willis), he finds her inside their cabin with a gun to her head. Frank recognizes Caleb as one of the secret agents, while Zeke looks forward to ruining Katherine. Blood is shed, and Caleb ends up dead, with Katherine only spared because she is with child.

“Katherine gets buckled up for some killing…”

Katherine gets buckled up for some killing, but a letter from her dead husband instructs her in the event of his death to send a telegram a Mr. John Scobell (Gdenga Akinnagbe). Scobell is said to be a good man who can help, but when he meets the bloodthirsty Katherine, he knows the kind of help he can offer may be the last thing in the world she wants.

While westerns remain the most classically rooted cinema genre with over a hundred years of tradition, I discovered in college that they were also one of the most punk rock movie genres. While odd at first, once you compare all of the anarchy, violence, and alcohol that the two lifestyles share, you begin to see the parallels. There was a reason The Clash liked to get done up in western duds.