If you like plot turns, this is your movie. It is impossible at any moment to predict what will happen next. Nothing is as it appears or ends as you think it will. The characters are all gritty and engaging. Cage is at his best. Dennis Hopper again shows his delightfully sinister side. JT Walsh is perfect in his last performance. Laura Boyle sizzles. Dwight Yoakum makes a film debut superbly in a cameo. I categorize this movie as "I am having a really, really, really bad day" film. Not a slow minute in this film. A real sleeper. This movie is underrated and, sadly, overlooked.

Michael Williams (Nicolas Cage) can't nail down a job due to his leg. He's running low on money. He goes to Red Rock to look for a drilling job. The bartender Wayne Brown (J.T. Walsh) assumes Michael to be Lyle from Dallas. He has hired Lyle (Dennis Hopper) to kill his cheating wife Suzanne (Lara Flynn Boyle). Michael takes the money and tells her. She makes a counter offer to double the money. He writes a letter to the sheriff. When he tries to leave town, he accidentally hits a man. He brings the injured man to the hospital but the man has actually been shot. Then Wayne Brown walks in as the sheriff of this little town but that's not the end of this twisty plot.

This is stripped down. There is a desolate feel to everything. The characters are dark. Nicolas Cage does some of his best work. Dennis Hopper is doing his dark killer character. Lara Flynn Boyle nails the femme fatale act. It does add a few too many craziness but I do like the hard noir style.

Red Rock West is a modern film noir with twists upon twists and characters with the behaviour of rats tied in a sack.

Its a gritty thriller with Nicholas Cage ends up in a bar and lies which leads him to all sorts of trouble. The bartender played by JT Walsh mistakes him for a hit-man and wants him to take out his wife.

Lara Flynn Boyle is his hot wife and it looks she has a thing with a ranch hand and Cage warns her about her husband. As Cage leaves town in the pouring rain he hits a pedestrian and takes him to hospital. The police close in on him about the accident and the elected sheriff is suspicious and he turns out to be JT Walsh.

Before long Dennis Hopper turns up as another suspicious character and then its a case of who to trust and who is lying while Cage tries to get away from Red Rock but keeps getting pulled back.

In the wrong hands this film would be preposterous and absurd. Director John Dahl has a sure touch for the drama, he gets the right types of performances from his main stars, good use of music and action scenes and piles on the twists and double crosses.

The 1990s were a good decade for Dahl and his Thriller Noirs which were essentially made on a low budget. One thing to notice in this film is that the police outside the Sheriff are rather smart and on the ball.