Dead for a Dollar

Dead for a Dollar is a 2022 American Western film written and directed by Walter Hill. It stars Christoph Waltz, Willem Dafoe, and Rachel Brosnahan. The plot follows a bounty hunter (Waltz) on a search to find the missing wife (Brosnahan) of a businessman. Brandon Scott, Warren Burke, Benjamin Bratt, and Hamish Linklater also star. The film premiered out of competition at the 79th Venice International Film Festival on September 6, 2022. It was released in the United States on September 30, 2022, by Quiver Distribution. Plot In 1897, in New Mexico Territory, veteran bounty hunter Max Borlund learns that Joe Cribbens, a card shark and armed robber who served five years in prison after being brought to justice by Borlund, will soon be released. Borlund visits Cribbens to warn him against following through with his vow to "buy a gun and look him up". A friend of Borlund's introduces him to a businessman, Martin Kidd, who hires Borlund to retrieve his wife, Rachel. He claims that Rachel was abducted and is being held for ransom in Chihuahua, Mexico by Elijah Jones, an African American army deserter. The officer assigns one of his men, Sergeant Alonzo Poe, to assist Borlund as he was a close friend of Jones and has a map to his hideout, after agreeing to deliver the ransom money. En route, the two men run afoul of Tiberio Vargas, a rich landowner who moonlights as a vicious bandit. Borlund refuses to accede to Vargas's extortion and forces him to leave. Cribbens also heads south to Chihuahua, where he tries to support himself by winning poker games. One night, he wins a large sum of money from William "English Bill" Palmer; when Palmer threatens Cribbens at gunpoint for his money back, the latter shoots Palmer dead in self-defense. Vargas goes to see Cribbens and reveals that he and Palmer were working together on a lucrative mining scheme. Since Cribbens killed him, Vargas insists that he now owes him a "favor". Borlund and Poe find the two runaways hiding with Jack Hannon, an American fugitive who mistakenly assumes that Borlund is after him and threatens Rachel's head. Borlund shoots him and saves her.