Dead Souls (BLU-RAY)

For his directorial swan song, Alex Cox (Repo Man, Straight To Hell) stars in this frontier fable of American greed, playing the mysterious drifter Strindler as he scours the West for the names of dead Mexican laborers. In this loose adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s 1842 novel Dead Souls, Strindler – or is it Swindler? – raises eyebrows when he offers to pay a pretty penny to add to his list of names. Wandering affably from saloon to ranch, Strindler exercises the old adage that money talks – but sometimes too loudly. Pistol duels and crooked officials abound, and Spaghetti Western legend Gianni Garko (If You Meet Sartana Pray For Your Death) claims a co-writer credit. But Cox’s idiosyncrasy stands out as the film veers tonally through the picaresque, dark satire and other unexpected twists. Dead Souls is a meditative Western that takes place at the borderlands of the American nightmare: where fortunes rest on a dirty deal, and legacies are built on blood and gold.