Dead Man’s Bounty (2006)

Karel Roden plays The Stranger, a bounty hunter who stumbles upon the scene of a massacre and finds flies buzzing around one of the dead men.

He recognizes the man as a wanted outlaw with a $500 bounty on his head. So he throws him across a horse and takes him to the nearest town.

And what a town he picks. The sheriff is a drunk. The townfolk are trigger happy. The whore at the local saloon is a mean-spirited, but very full-figured gal, who doesn’t know whether to love or hate the aforementioned sheriff.

Before running off to be a Civil War hero while fighting for the South, he fathered a baby she chose to abort because he never responded to any of her love letters.

The sheriff supplements his income by letting men at the only saloon in town punch him in the face. The deal — if he can recognize who’s behind each punch on the second go round, he wins the money.

Or, in the case of The Stranger, the dead man he just hauled into town. Of course, a dispute ensues.

The Stranger, bleeding badly from a head wound, flees. A posse forms to chase him, with the sheriff as the tracker.

Eventually, most of these misfits wind up back in the town where they started.

Review:

A unique film. But then, what would one expect from a movie billed as “the first Polish Western?” If any of the character’s evokes sympathy, it’s the drunken sheriff. Oh, and no one has a name.

There’s a touch of Spaghetti Western in here somewhere. There are a couple of decent songs, including the ironic theme song, “Summer Love.” But with all the flashbacks and the scarcity of dialogue, you’ll find yourself spending a lot of time sorting it all out.

But it ain’t boring. And, despite the billing, it ain’t a Val Kilmer film. He plays the dead man. And he utters not a single line of dialogue. But his corpse does get abused quite a bit and provides a unique perspective from which to watch some of the “action.”

Directed by:
Piotr Uklanski

Cast:
Karel Roden … The Stranger
Boguslaw Linda … The Sheriff
Katarzyna Figura … The Woman
Val Kilmer … The Wanted Man
Marek Barbasiewicz … State marshal
Grzegorz Emmanuel … Rat Faced Man
Jerzy Rogalski … Shop owner
Rafal Mohr … Shop assistant
Krzysztof Zaleski … Fat man
Bartosz Zukowski … Blonde man

aka
Summer Love

Songs:
“Summer Love”
“I’m a Gun” by Lorne Greene

Runtime: 94 min.

Memorable line:

Townsman, offering the woman a cigarette: “What, no bad habits?”
The woman: “No. Just bad company.”

The woman: “I didn’t want the baby anymore. I went down to the stable with a stick. I did it by myself. I was laying down there. There was this little white dog which came to me and started to whimper out loud. It wouldn’t leave, attracted by the smell of blood. I heard someone coming, so I grabbed the dog. There would be no life for me here if they knew that I had killed a baby. When I left the stable that evening, I left two dead bodies behind. I knew I would not be able to have children again.”
The sheriff: “Hit me.”
Instead, she wipes out of the heart he’s made on her bar with wet rings from a glass of whiskey.

Karel Roden as The Stranger, slipping out of town after a night with the woman in Dead Man’s Bounty (2006)

Katarzyna Figura as The Woman, kneeling at the Fat Man’s command in Dead Man’s Bounty (2006)

Bartosz Zukowski as The Blonde Man, part of the posse in Dead Man’s Bounty (2006)

Grzegorz Emanuel as the Rat Faced Man, part of the posse in Dead Man’s Bounty (2006)

Jerzy Rogalski as a member of the posse in Dead Man’s Bounty (2006)

Krzysztof Zaleski as the Fat Man with Katarzyna Figura as The Woman in Dead Man’s Bounty (2006)

Boguslaw Linda as The Sheriff, swearing in his posse in Dead Man’s Bounty (2006)

Karel Roden as The Stranger, wounded during his encounter in town in Dead Man’s Bounty (2006)