Dust & Bullets
2012 · 22m · España
Directed by Pablo Lapastora
Tones: contemplative, dark, melancholic
In 1860, ex-gunslinger John lives apart from society with his son, trying to keep the boy from surrounding violence, but his cruel past hunts him down to settle pending debts.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a western that *feels* like a western—which means it's already playing it safer than I'd hope, even if the melancholy framing and the father-son entanglement hint at something less predictable than the premise lets on.
Lapastora locates himself in a clear lineage of revisionist westerns that prize moral exhaustion over heroism, and the 22-minute constraint forces a formal precision in how violence and domesticity collide—this is a film that knows exactly what it's inheriting and what it's choosing to interrogate.
The real work here is likely in how the director manages the boy's presence as a mirror rather than a plot device—that single tonal choice of keeping the son observant rather than reactive could be what transforms this from period-piece into something that actually *lands*.