The two-time Oscar-winner stars in the new western from Geronimo and Broken Trail director Walter Hill.
Django Unchained star Christoph Waltz is back in the saddle again as another ruthlessly efficient bounty hunter in Dead for a Dollar, the new western from veteran director Walter Hill (Geronimo, The Long Riders, Broken Trail).
Waltz — a two-time Oscar-winner, for Django Unchained and Inglourious Basterds — will share the screen with Willem Dafoe (Spider Man: No Way Home), Rachel Brosnahan (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), Brandon Scott (Grey’s Anatomy), Warren Burke (Family Reunion) and Benjamin Bratt (Law & Order) for a gritty drama set to open in theaters Sept. 30 after its Sept. 6 world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.
It’s 1897 when veteran bounty hunter Max Borlund (Waltz) journeys deep into Mexico, where he encounters professional gambler and outlaw Joe Cribbens (Dafoe) — a sworn enemy he sent to prison years earlier. Borlund is on a mission to find and return Rachel Kidd (Brosnahan), the hostage wife of a wealthy Santa Fe businessman. But after learning Mrs. Kidd actually isn’t a hostage, but instead fled from an abusive marriage, Max is faced with a choice: Finish the dishonest job he’s been hired to do, or stand aside while ruthless mercenary outlaws and his long-time rival close in. Max and his partner Alonzo Poe (Burke) have nothing to gain if they resist. Nothing, that is, except their honor.
On the occasion of the Dead for a Dollar world premiere, Walter Hill — whose other credits include 48 HRS., The Warriors, Last Man Standing, Wild Bill and Southern Comfort — will be receive the Cartier Glory to the Filmmaker Award of the 79th Venice International Film Festival, an honor dedicated to a personality who has made a particularly original contribution to the contemporary film industry.
“Both inside and outside of tradition,” said Venice Film Festival director Alberto Barbera, “Walter Hill constantly redraws the contours of the genres that form the horizons of his cinema — if nothing else, in order to transcend conventions in his nonstop search for a constructive relationship with the legacy of the American legend, inherited from classic cinema, and, on the other hand, for authentic modernity in ethics and form. Whether it be westerns, thrillers, horror, war films, or detective movies, Hill never refrains from making them an opportunity to create formal and narrative geometries that aim to recount modern times through genre stereotypes and to propose an aesthetic point of view that disregards and goes beyond the traditional demarcation line between good and evil. An auteur in the full sense of the term, Walter Hill nevertheless has no problem recognizing himself as a specialist in action movies, whose violence is subjugated to various degrees of stylization, and his search for new visual effects is conducted through constant experimentation on how to use the various possibilities offered by the film language.”
Hill commented in a prepared statement: “In the film world, one knows it’s a great honor to be invited for a special screening at the Venice Film Festival. With my new film Dead For A Dollar, this is the fourth time that I’ve been so fortunate, and now this award makes me yet more grateful. My thanks to Alberto Barbera, Giulia D'Agnolo Vallan, Cartier and the entire film community that has given me so much support and encouragement over the years. Thank you all, you’ve made an old man happy.”
