Barlow Jacobs is Wade McCurry, a Texan who fought for the North during the Civil War and was disowned as a result.
Years after the war has ended, he gets a letter from the father who threatened to shoot him if he ever returned. The letter asks him to return.
But when Wade does, he learns that his father died in a riding accident a month earlier and his lone remaining sibling (Clare Bowen as Martha) is on the verge of selling the family farm.
She sees it as a prison. She desperately wants a new life in San Francisco, running a hotel with her husband (David Call as Heck).
An old-timer who lives nearby doubts Joe McCurry’s death was an accident. After all, that family farm is the only land in the area with water on it.
Without water, the copper in the nearby hills will be trapped there forever. He suspects a land agent named E.J. Lane of murdering Joe McCurry.
Wade sets out to find the truth, even though his sister wishes he would just let the past in the past.
Barlow Jacobs as Wade McCurry in Dead Man’s Burden (2012)
Clare Bowen as Martha Kirkland in “Dead Man’s Burden” (2012)
Review:
This tragic tale is proof you don’t need a large cast and an enormous budget to film an entertaining Western. Moshe gives us a film that’s much, much better than the average 21st Century Western.
McCurry is an ex-lawman who insists folks live by the law, even in a remote corner of the West where it doesn’t exist. And he isn’t going to apologize for the past, even if nearly everyone he encounters considers him a traitor for fighting on the wrong side of the Civil War.
Jacobs and Clare Bowen as his sister are particularly effective, but this is a rare 21st Century Western in which everyone in the cast looks comfortable and seems like they belong in front of the camera, rather than a hobbyist playing actor or actress.
David Call as Heck Kirkland in Dead Man’s Burden (2012)
Joseph Lyle Taylor as E.J. Lane with David Call as Heck Kirkland in Dead Man’s Burden (2012)
Director:
Jared Moshe
Cast:
Barlow Jacobs … Wade McCurry
Clare Bowen … Martha Kirkland
David Call … Heck Kirkland
Joseph Lyle Taylor … E.J. Lane
Richard Riehle … Three Penny Hank
Jerry Clarke … Sheriff Deason
Adam O’Bryne … Archie Ainsworth
Travis Hammer … Ben Ainsworth
Luce Rains … Joe McCurry
Score: H. Scott Salinas
Runtime: 93 min.
Richard Riehle as Three Penny Hank with Barlow Jacobs as Wade McCurry in Dead Man’s Burden (2012)
Clare Bowen as Martha Kirkland and David Call as Heck Kirkland in Dead Man’s Burden (2012)
Memorable lines:
Sheriff Deason to McCurry: “Just because you made peace with your past doesn’t mean the world has.”
MuCurry: “World oughta damn well cooled off already.”
Martha: “I’ll talk to him.”
Heck: “The only thing he’s going to listen to is a bullet.”
Martha: “He’ll listen to me.”
Heck: “And what has he done to give you a crazy notion like that?”
Martha: “We’re kin.”
Heck: “God dammit, Martha. He dug up your (dead) father.”
Heck to Martha: “That’s the thing about killin’. You open that door, no tellin’ how many are going to go through.”
Barlow Jacobs as Wade McCurry in Dead Man’s Burden (2012)
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