Dead for A Dollar
Quiver Distribution | Release Date: September 30, 2022 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
61
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 17 Critic Reviews
Positive:
9
Mixed:
7
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
The New York TimesA.O. ScottSep 29, 2022
It’s solidly and proudly a B picture, as the Boetticher dedication makes clear. But in an age of blockbuster bloat and streaming cynicism, a solid B movie — efficiently shot (by Lloyd Ahern II) and effectively acted (by everyone) is something of a miracle. Hill had a job to do. He did it. That’s worth something. Read full review
75
Original-CinLiam LaceySep 29, 2022
Walter Hill’s new film Dead for a Dollar is in some ways your grandpa’s Western, a big-sky drama full of horses, hats, guns, hairpin plot turns and an ensemble of colourfully drawn characters. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comGlenn KennySep 6, 2022
This story is bound to lead to several showdowns at once, and the action climax is beautifully orchestrated by Hill: it’s suspenseful, jarring, and never descends to formal cheating of narrative cheapness to give the audience what it wants and deserves. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesNoel MurraySep 29, 2022
This is not an epic; nor is it meant to be. It’s a snappy story about a bunch of violent men — and one particular woman, anxious to get clear of them. Read full review
70
Screen DailyLee MarshallSep 8, 2022
Dead for a Dollar is a revisionist western served up in a traditional twine-tied package. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterLeslie FelperinSep 8, 2022
Although Hill certainly puts in a few sly tips of the hat to canonical and cult favorites and is clearly enjoying exploiting the audience’s expectations of the genre, Dead for a Dollar isn’t an empty nostalgia exercise. Nor is it a revisionist postmodern deconstruction. It’s somewhere between the two, built on a narrative architecture as classical in its vernacular as Doric columns on a bank, but with details that will surely remind audiences of the future that it was made in the 2020s. Read full review
67
IndieWireSophie Monks KaufmanSep 8, 2022
Despite a hectic list of characters and their grievances, the plot is not tightly constructed and scans, for stretches, like a hang-out movie. Read full review
67
The Film StageRory O'ConnorSep 8, 2022
Dead for a Dollar is derivative by nature, but not in unpleasing ways. Read full review
65
TheWrapBen CrollSep 8, 2022
Dead for a Dollar is a proud heir to a longstanding lineage of low-budget westerns. Consider that a feature and a bug. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriOct 2, 2022
The picture’s surface austerity and simplicity have a crystallizing effect, drawing our attention to the coldhearted, transactional nature of this world. Read full review
60
Film ThreatSumner ForbesSep 30, 2022
While Dead for a Dollar may not make one toss out their copy of The Searchers, it’s still a refreshing change of pace seeing three excellent actors in an uncommon genre. When it comes to its originality, though, we’re left watching the tumbleweeds float on by. Read full review
58
The PlaylistMarshall ShafferSep 8, 2022
Dead for a Dollar provides a decently intriguing yarn within the framework of the Western that burrows a few inches below the surface. No one can say Hill didn’t hold up his end of the deal, which may be all that matters to him in the end. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubMark KeizerOct 4, 2022
Ultimately, Hill performs his duties like a man for hire in Dead For A Dollar, much like Max Borland is a man for hire down in Mexico. Read full review
50
VarietyOwen GleibermanSep 8, 2022
Hill wants to “do justice” to each of these people, but the result is that Dead for a Dollar doesn’t have a dramatic core. It has actors we like to watch, doing what they do well (like Waltz playing a civilized badass), but it isn’t structured so that any of their fates gets a rise out of us. Read full review
42
ColliderErick MassotoOct 5, 2022
With the options of taking the audience on a fully-fledged bang-bang Western adventure or commenting on the genre’s issues in past decades, Dead For a Dollar chooses to do neither and wastes its stellar cast with drowsy performances which never make you root or fear for any character. Read full review
40
Time OutPhil de SemlyenSep 7, 2022
Sluggishly paced, stodgily scripted and curiously edited, it’s not so much a bullet ballet as a creaky dance across an abandoned saloon. Read full review
38
Movie NationRoger MooreOct 2, 2022
A vintage Hill bit with a horse coming through glass doors and a couple of decent exchanges in an overall perfunctory big shootout finale arrive just in time to remind of us how great this filmmaker once was, and how sad it is that he has to hang up his spurs with Dead for a Dollar. Read full review
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