In a Valley of Violence
Short description
In a Valley of Violence follows Paul, a drifter travelling with his dog toward Mexico who decides to take a shortcut through a desolate stretch of desert. He passes through Denton, a small Texas town known locally as the valley of violence, and quickly draws the attention of Gilly, the hot-tempered son of the local marshal. A confrontation between the two sets off a chain of events that turns the town into the centre of a bloody cycle of retaliation, while the weary marshal tries to stop the situation from escalating further.
Ti West wrote and directed the film, which sits between The Sacrament and X as the eighth of the thirteen features he has directed. Ethan Hawke plays Paul, with John Travolta as the marshal, James Ransone as Gilly, and Taissa Farmiga and Karen Gillan as the sisters who run the town's hotel. Jason Blum and Peter Phok produced alongside West, and the production involved a crew of 97.
Released in October 2016, the western runs 104 minutes. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.1 from more than twenty thousand votes, matching the 6.1 from a few hundred votes on TMDB, while a critics' rating of 6.8 from 73 reviews places it somewhat higher with reviewers than with general audiences.
What's left behind the scenes
- During the film's premiere at the annual South by Southwest event in Austin, Texas, one of the audience members started talking on his cell phone, and actor and television host Doug Benson promptly ejected him from the theater.
- The character Clyde Martin, portrayed on screen by John Travolta, is partially based on the real-life sheriff B.J. Wheeler from Clovis, New Mexico.
- John Travolta's first Western.
- The filmmakers drew inspiration from the Western "High Plains Drifter" (Clint Eastwood, 1973) and the action film "First Blood" (Ted Kotcheff, 1982).
- Taissa Farmiga's first Western.
- Around the 56th minute of the film, when the priest is pulled off the mule, a so-called "Wilhelm scream" can be heard (this is a frequently used sound effect in film and television, a kind of "Easter egg" among Hollywood sound engineers).
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