Product Description

Studio: Lions Gate Home Ent. Release Date: 02/06/2007 Run time: 124 minutes Rating: R

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #42426 in DVD
• Brand: Lions Gate
• Released on: 2003-11-11
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, German, Macedonian, Turkish
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 127 minutes

Amazon.com
Mortality and graphic slaughter are central to Macedonian director Milcho Manchevski's first film since 1994's Before the Rain. In modern New York a young man, Edge (Adrian Lester), breaks into an apartment inhabited by old lady Angela (Rosemary Murphy), who then tells him a story at gunpoint. In Angela's surreally symbolic tale, set around 1905, there are two feuding brothers: gunfighter Luke (David Wenham) becomes a bounty hunter in Macedonia; Bible-quoting, vengeance-seeking Elijah (Joseph Fiennes) follows, and hell goes with him. Dust is part contemporary drama, part spaghetti Western homage--with the Ottoman Empire forces standing in for the Mexican army--and all meditation on the nature of cinematic myth-making. The performances are variable, but a plethora of movie references, particularly to various Sergio Leone films, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and The Wild Bunch, combine in a stylish and provocative fable that bears comparison with The Usual Suspects and Sex and Lucia. It also echoes Ararat (2002), in which a production crew makes a film about the 1915-18 Turkish genocide of the Armenians. Taken at face value the plot stretches credibility, but as a reflection on the nature of storytelling, Dust is an ingenious concoction. --Gary S. Dalkin

Customer Reviews

A film that rewards people curious enough to explore it.
It's like this...I originally bought this movie because I had seen David Wenham in LotR, thought he was very nice looking, and got this film hoping for further opportunities to stare into his limpid blue eyes and gaze at his pout. What actually happened was that I was sucked into this movie on its own merits, and ended up very impressed with it. Some reviews say that it is difficult to follow - in my own estimation I reckon that the first time you watch this you take in most of the functional bits of information (and maybe marvel at the nice shots), but you will feel confused/cheated by the numerous un-subtitled speech that is included in the dialogue. My suggestion, watch the movie again with the DVD subtitles turned on. Suddenly, all the foreign language dialogue is revealed to you and you will a: see a whole different layer to the film that the director clearly intended only to reveal to people who were curious enough to translate all the languages being spoken, b: suddenly understand a couple of things you might not have done and c: appreciate your first viewing and the general confusion of the 'hero' in the midst of all this dialogue that he didn't understand.

That doesn't mean you should watch it the first time around with subtitles. Please don't. I suspect that will spoil everything.

Summary: Very clever. Much respect to the director. A good film to watch if you like films that challenge you a bit.

(...)

Dust
DUST is your typical western set in rebellious, turn-of-the-last-century Macedonia, with the two western heroes portrayed by a British and an Australian actor; equally typical is the interwoven story of a modern day burglar falling in love with his nonagenarian victim while occasionally tearing her apartment apart in a search for hidden gold. Okay, maybe "love" is too strong a word. Let's call it a sympathetic bond.
As a story about storytelling DUST is much more successful than it is as either a period western or a modern crime thriller. I enjoyed its quirky, skitterish ways (with emphasis on the word "quirky.") Fans of spaghetti westerns should get a kick out of the over-the-top, exploding blood pellet fight scenes, with Turkish Nationals replacing Federales as the army that couldn't shoot straight.

Dynamic Mixture
Dust is a dynamic mixture of love & hate, attack & defense, power & helplessness, reality & fantasy, lust & rejection, expectations & cruel reality, belief & skepticism, boiled all together in a furnace up in the Macedonian highlands, powered by unimaginable greed for gold and power. It is an adventure which will take you back in time, when people could loose everything in a split second, and then back in present, just enough to help you re-evaluate what you have just seen with today's sense and criteria... Real artistic refreshment from the all-present commercial & worthless Hollywood plastic. Five thumbs up for this excellent movie from Milcho Manchevski!