They do it.’’ And that brings us to Dead For A Dollar, about a bounty hunter named Max Borlund who has a job to do, and he does it.
Speaking of which, if all this sounds like it could be a riff on The Searchers, Hill, who co-wrote the Dead For A Dollar script with Matt Harris, doesn’t take the bait.The blocking for the final shootout sees Borlund mostly standing in wide-open areas yet never getting shot.
Willem Dafoe has a grand old time as Joe Cribbens, a Texas horse thief locked up by Borlund five years earlier.
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.As Hill, the Emmy-winning producer of the 2006 Western miniseries Broken Trail once recounted, “The old-time actors used to say if you have the right horse and the right hat the rest was downhill.” With Hill’s Dead for a Dollar, that turns out to be untrue.