Where does one even begin with The Night They Came Home? Might the starting point be the strange framing device in which Danny Trejo plays a grizzled old man dictating the film’s narrative to two characters who are otherwise entirely useless to the plot? Or perhaps we could begin with the movie’s weird fascination with violence toward women exhibited by men at the turn of the century—when our story takes place— which leads to a number of scenes involving sexual assault that are both utterly egregious and entirely incidental? Or maybe it could be the simple incompetence of the production at any given moment, such as in the climactic shoot-out, where the sound designers almost certainly used a video game sound effect for the reloading of a rifle?
In fact, yes. Let’s begin there. Here is a movie with no outward style of which to speak—a Western which has been captured with dimension-deprived scope that suggests little thought was put into or budget aimed toward the sort of visual language we usually attribute to the genre.
Perhaps the budget can be used as a crutch to explain why this production was so obviously on-the-cheap. However, directors are doing incredible things with minimal budgets these days, so this sort of excuse simply doesn’t cut it anymore. Lack of funds doesn’t explain the abysmal screenplay, either. Written by John A. Russo and James O’Brien, the script somehow manages to render a fairly straightforward story into an incomprehensible mess. The marketing for The Night They Came Home states that the story is “based on true events.” It follows the rise and fall of the Rufus Buck Gang, led by the generically scheming Buck (Charlie Townsend), and their relationship with a local sheriff (Tim Abell) who decides to extend his own jurisdiction in order to launch an investigation into the gang’s crimes.
This is a very strange movie which seems quite keen to split the narrative down the middle. Neither Buck’s gang or the sheriff are remotely interesting, largely because Volk’s style of directing seems to have been to call it a day after just a single take of dialogue recitation. The equivalency of these sides, though, is quite telling since our investment is always going to be tipped toward the downfall of the gang. However, despite their violent escapades (sexual and otherwise), Volk and the screenwriters surprisingly approach the climax with something akin to sympathy toward Buck and his men.
There is no basis for this, of course, and The Night They Came Home climaxes in a sleepy shootout complete with those obviously digital sound effects and no idea how to establish stakes or tension. By the film’s end, we’ve only seen a few familiar faces (in addition to a desperately bored Trejo, there are Robert Carradine as a potential but doomed source of information and an amusingly top-billed Brian Austin Green cameoing as an early victim of the gang’s terror streak) stranded in a bewildering waste of time, resources and the audience’s intelligence.
Photo courtesy of Lionsgate
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