South of Heaven, West of Hell

The place described by the title would most likely be purgatory, and that's where you'll think you are while you watch and wonder what you or anyone else did to deserve having to sit through the directorial debut of country music star Dwight Yoakam. Nothing against Yoakam personally: He's a fine singer and he's turned in some good character work in movies such as Sling Blade. He just doesn't have leading-man charisma, he can't write screenplays, he can't direct a coherent story, and the godawful xylophone music he composed for the score is hardly worthy of anyone with a recording contract. The movie has virtually no "plot" as such -- honorable marshal Valentine Casey (Yoakam) must confront the family of outlaws that adopted him as an orphaned child, and until that happens, characters sit around yelling "Goddamn!" a lot at the top of their lungs. Bridget Fonda shows up in a pointless subplot seemingly designed to get her to make out with Yoakam, or lure her daddy Peter into a (useless) cameo role. Other stars also stop by to waste their time, including Vince Vaughn, Bud Cort, and Billy Bob Thornton in a glam-rock wig and cyan suit that make him look like Whitesnake singer David Coverdale, as he recites lines like "Adalyne's tribulations rose like sea bellows and crashed into her head" without any inflection whatsoever. The film is alternately billed as both an "existential" and a "gothic" Western, because of an insinuation that Casey may in fact be a ghost, a theory not supported by any actual plot details -- he sustains injuries, drinks, and gets horny, hardly the actions of a dead man. And whoever had the bright idea, in an otherwise serious film, to play an attempted gang rape/immolation/crotch slashing scene for laughs -- only to follow it up with a graphic testicular surgery scene also played for laughs -- ought to be shot.