BLACK DOG

I found this on VHS at a thrift shop and couldn't believe I hadn't heard about it previously.  I was super excited to watch this film since it starred Patrick Swayze, who is one of my guilty pleasures with a trio of his movies: Dirty Dancing, Road House, and Next of Kin (overlooked in Swayze's canon of films, as good, if not better than Road House). Unfortunately, Black Dog didn't live up to my expectations, especially with Swayze doing some of his weakest acting.

The plot is about an ex-trucker pulled back on the road to haul a load of contraband to save his family from being killed. Meat Loaf plays a bad guy trying to intercept and steal the load for himself. Randy Travis is a would be country song writer, who is riding shotgun with Swayze and his motives as to which side he is on remain suspect.

While Swayze was never the greatest actor, he usually could tear up a role that called for over the top tough/sensitive guy histrionic acting. In Black Dog, Swayze's acting is weak, either he didn't have the right direction or his heart just wasn't in this film. Meat Loaf is his dependable self as the bible verse spouting bad guy, but the real revelation here is Randy Travis. He's so good that the film would have been better with Travis as the lead. Maybe the part of Earl, "a good-ole boy wanna-be country song writer", just came too easy for him, whatever it was, he is superb in his role and is the only reasson I would recommend watching Black Dog.

TEXAS RANGERS

Recently I've watched a good many movies with musicians and have partially completed write-ups on all of them. Since starting a "real" job as opposed to my "fake" EBAY job, I don't seem to have time to get any of them finished (which was a real disappointment that I didn't get The Paul Lynde Halloween Special featuring KISS done in time for the holiday). I figured it was in my best interest to watch only movies without musicians until, if ever, I get caught up. Browsing through the free on-demand movies, I saw Texas Rangers listed and thought I would give it a try since I like a good western. If it wasn't good, what the heck, it was free and I could always turn it off with nothing wasted but a little bit of my time. Boy did I get a surprise when I found that the movie featured Randy Travis and Usher (billed as Raymond Usher).


Texas Rangers purports to tell the story of the re-formation of The Texas Rangers after The War Between The States. I see by a lot of comments on the internet that the movie is totally inaccurate, but I'm not watching for accuracy (that's what documentaries are for), I'm watching for entertainment and Texas Rangers turned out to be a fairly good western, only falling apart at the very end when it became so clichéd it became painful to watch.


Now on to the two musicians featured in Texas Rangers, Usher and Randy Travis. Usher holds his on with the two main stars, James Van Der Beek and Dylan McDermott and certainly outshines Ashton Kutcher, who appears to be playing a cowboy straight from That 70's Show. Although Randy Travis' part is small in Texas Rangers, he's so good in the movie as a man of few words with a cigarillo in his mouth (ala Clint Eastwood) that it made me wish his part had been larger.


Texas Rangers is certainly not going to go down in cinema history as one of the great Westerns, but if you have a free 90 minutes and are interested in the genre, I don't think you'll be disappointed in the movie, just keep in mind that I warned you about the weak ending.