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A Million Ways to Die in the West | 2014 | R | - 7.6.10
A timid sheep rancher (Seth MacFarlane) in 1880s Arizona loses his girl (Amanda Seyfried) when he backs out of a showdown. Meeting a lovely and mysterious woman (Charlize Theron), he develops some courage, but her estranged husband (Liam Neeson) rides into town to make trouble. Also with Sarah Silverman, Neil Patrick Harris, Giovanni Ribisi and Wes Studi. Directed by MacFarlane. A few scenes feature a Native American language or pseudo-language with English subtitles. [1:56]
SEX/NUDITY 7 - A man (he's supposedly a virgin) wearing long underwear sits on a bed while his fiancée wears a corset top showing some cleavage and a very long skirt and slip; with her back to the camera, she lifts her skirts to show him her crotch area (we cannot see anything) and his eyes enlarge as he says it is like a hotdog or sausage wrapped in beef; she says there is more and he startles, then rushes to the nightstand and closes the Bible before they jump into bed and under the covers where we see the shape of her spread legs and his body in a push-up position on top of her and he says, "Pretty big isn't it?," to which she replies, "Oh yes, you're huge!" and he says, "No, I mean your vagina" (the scene ends when a woman knocks on the door).
► A husband grabs his wife's head and face, kissing her for a prolonged time, after which she coughs loudly; he says that they should take time to be husband and wife properly, and begin to remove gun belts and unzipping his trousers with his back to the camera until she hits him in the face with a rock (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details); he falls face down with his buttocks showing to the camera in close-up and she sticks a large flower between his cheeks and leaves.
► During a hallucination (please see the Substance Use category for more details) five sheep on hind legs urinate into the air like a fountain as we see five penises and five streams of urine. A man lies among sheep in a field and we see a stream of urine from a sheep penis in a close-up, into his face.
► A man is engaged to the town's prostitute; he sits in the saloon, waiting for her and we hear her and a male customer off-screen, shouting and moaning in sexual ecstasy and yelling, "Yes! Yes!"; she then appears on a balcony wearing a tight corset top that bares significant cleavage and then greets her fiancé, who grimaces and she apologizes for bad breath caused by oral sex. A prostitute's female boss wearing a long dress with a corset top that shows significant cleavage, calls over to her that a male customer wants anal sex, specifically, to "put his penis in an [anatomical term deleted]"; the prostitute and her fiancé agree to the appointment and the prostitute tells her fiancé that another male customer wanted her to smoke a cigar, put ash on his [anatomical term deleted] and masturbate him all at once (we do not see this).
► A man lies shirtless with fully bared chest in bed beside a woman wearing a sleeveless opaque nightgown; he demands her to "DO IT!" and she sucks on his handlebar mustache as his eyes roll back and he reaches under his covers moving his arm; we hear loud stomach gurgling and he runs out of the room wearing long white shorts that show his lower legs as well as his bare chest, back, arms and shoulders. On a sunny street, a man makes his shadow on the ground appear to kiss the mouth of another man's shadow: the first man places his hand at his groin, extends two fingers, and thrusts his pelvis when the camera cuts to the ground and his shadow looks to have a thrusting penis; the man takes a step closer to make the shadow appear to be penetrating the mouth of the other man's shadow. A man wipes white foamy semen from a prostitute's face using a hanky, then gives the hanky to another man who says it's sticky and waves it around.
► Several scenes feature a man and a woman kissing for a prolonged time -- on a street corner, in a street, at a barn dance, sitting on a fence, in front of her residence door at night and in the middle of a herd of sheep. A man and a woman kiss briefly a few times.
► A woman hugs her fiancé on the street and says, "Let's go inside and [F-word deleted]!"; they walk off screen and sex is implied. During shooting practice with a woman, a man says he will, "Shoot a load into her cans,"; and he talks about "jerking off" parts of a pistol to clean it. A man standing in a street tells a crowd that a woman does not have a hairy genital area (using a crude anatomical term), but when her mustached boyfriend goes down there, her privates fill up with hair. A man tells another man to give his horse oral sex. A man tells a male friend that he did things (of a sexual nature) with his uncle, but it was meaningless. A man says that a sheep was in a whorehouse and made $20. A woman says that she was married at nine, not wanting to be a 15-year-old spinster. A man asks a horse if it would like to have sex with a cow. Two couples sit at a table and one man suggests that the couples have sex for the first time in the same room, and the other man says no (we don't see anything). After the end credits, an African-American cowboy at a fair calls out, "WTF, bring me one of them white women!"
► A man enters a room and sees another man and a woman sitting in bed, their covers are up above their waist (her cleavage is showing). A few women wear floor length dresses with low-cut necklines and tight waists that reveal cleavage in a saloon and at a barn dance. A woman wears a giant bustle and raises her skirt to show an iron cage holding up the bustle; we see her legs completely covered in long bloomers. A man wears long underwear at home. Many Native Americans appear shirtless and wearing bone breastplates. A man in a street lowers his trousers slightly revealing a small part of his buttocks and underwear in a side view as he squats over a hat (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details).
VIOLENCE/GORE 6 - At a county fair, a photographer shoots a portrait of a man and a woman, who explode into flames with the background scenery; the man and the woman wave their arms and jump as two other men shoot at them with rifles (no one is hit); the photographer falls to the ground in flames and we see his bloody, severed arm burning in close up. A falling block of ice smashes a man's head as it knocks him to the ground; we see a lot of brown splatter shoot out in all directions and the corner of the ice block is seen to be covered in red blood on top of a smashed man's body (a hat, an arm and a leg are sticking out).
► A bull charges an outdoor vendor and carries him off on its back, presumably dead. A man lies dead in the street (for three days, we hear) and we see two wolves drag the body away at night; the next day, a dog retrieves a severed calf and foot from the body, a man throws it off-screen and we hear a woman scream loudly. Bandits stop an elderly man, steal his gold and the ringleader shoots the old man in the chest, killing him (no blood) as he falls backward off screen. A man sings what he says is an Islamic death chant and a bandit dies of snake venom that was in a bullet that grazed the bandit's arm (we see torn fabric); the wounded man stumbles and slurs his speech, then falls to the ground in the street and a man and a woman stand by the body and the woman says the man is dead. After the end credits, a man approaches a county fair shooting booth, shooting the operator dead (he falls backward, no blood) and walks away.
► Two men start a gunfight and one of the men backs out; the other man shoots the first man in the lower leg with a glancing shot, felling him (we see no blood, but there is a black bullet mark on his boot later). During a shootout a man shoots another in the arm and we see torn fabric, while the other man shoots the first man's gun out of his hand. During a shootout over a woman, a man drops his gun belt and tells the other man to take the woman. Bandits chase a man across the desert on horseback, shooting but missing him and stop at a racing train, as the lone man dashes across the tracks; the bandits head back to town, enter a saloon and their ringleader threatens to kill more people after shooting a man in the chest at point blank range (the shot man falls dead, without blood showing). Bandits point guns at people and threaten to kill several people around town in a few scenes; a woman says the ringleader will be the dead man one day; in a jail cell, one of the bandits beats up the sheriff and leaves him on the floor with a gash over the eye (could be alive or dead); the ringleader chokes a woman and she coughs, then chokes her again later and kisses her, making her cough louder until she picks up a large rock and slams it into the man's face (no blood), felling him and escaping. A bandit threatens to shoot an elderly man's dog between the eyes. Bandits go into a town and threaten to start killing people if anyone interferes with them.
► Native Americans knock a man unconscious and tie him to a stake, but stop short of lighting fire to him. A man shoots at a target on a door and his father comes through the door shooting a rifle but hitting nothing. An extended fight sequence in a saloon shows men fighting with fists, broken chairs and broken liquor bottles (all objects broken over other men's heads); one man dies of a slit throat (we see a lot of blood flowing), another man has his head pounded into the bar several times while tables are overturned and men fall, one man is thrown into the street through the glass window, which shatters loudly, two women fight by pulling hair and pushing, and two men in a corner pretend to fight and one slugs the other in the jaw (no serious injuries seem to occur). A woman dancing kicks a man in the face, without injury, but he falls.
► During a hallucination (please see the Substance Use category for more details) five sheep on hind legs urinate into the air like a fountain as we see five penises and five streams of urine; a horde of dwarf bandits chases the man, shooting at but not hitting him; a large condor attacks him from the air and we see the bird's testicles as the man kicks it in the groin and a door handle changes into a snapping snake's head and back into a handle.
► A man lies among sheep in a field and we see a stream of urine from a sheep penis in a close-up, into his face. A boy puts a tooth underneath his pillow and in the morning he finds a clump of horse manure, which his father shouts at him to clean up. A plate of "pig parts and cream" is full of flies. A woman says that her dress looks like Jane Austen threw up all over her. Men flatulate several times. A man flatulates at a saloon table as he stands and falls dead, head first into the table with a loud crash. A man stumbles and then suffers diarrhea on screen and we see him use two hats apparently to catch the feces as we hear a loud series of gurgles, flatulence and splats (we do not see feces until he knocks a hat over with his foot and we see what looks like a black and brown flow onto the ground).
► A rattlesnake rattles and approaches a scared-looking man's foot, but the scene ends, apparently without a bite. A rattlesnake opens its mouth wide and snaps at the camera in close-up. A doctor holds a bird that pecks a bloody wound on a man's face to clean it.
► A man stumbles and falls on his sheep ranch and in town on rough streets, is thrown through a large glass saloon window among loud shattering glass, is hit in the head twice with large dinner plates (falling to the ground and off a horse), falls over a short desert ledge and falls into a deep hole (we see the man's forehead cut slightly and bleeding a little in three scenes).
► We hear that the local schoolteacher died when a passing tumbleweed slit her throat in front of children. A man tells friends that the West is vulgar, dirty and dangerous and they should all just wear coffins for clothes. A man tells a woman that his dad is up on the hill, burying himself beside Mom.
► Multiple spoken lists of ways to die in the Old West are made, for example: snake venom, charging bulls, bar brawls, gunfights, wild desert animals, falling ice blocks, cholera, small pox, larger pox, county fairs, photography explosions, prospecting, Indians, train wrecks, bad booze, desert heat, card games that end in shootouts, refusing to play cards, doctors that use blue jays to peck at wounds, bowel inflammation, and blood poisoning.
► A woman teaches a man to shoot, but he cannot hit any of the bottles lined up on a rail fence and he slaps them to the ground with his arm in frustration; shooting at plates in the air, he misses and a plate hits him on the head, felling him without an apparent injury; the woman shoots with two pistols at a county fair shooting booth and wins a prize.
► A kiosk sign shows an African-American man eating watermelon and a male bystander objects to the sign. At a dance, a local comic refers to Indians scalping people and tickets and a horse urinating in people's drinks. In a street, two men make obscene hand gestures.
LANGUAGE 10 - About 61 F-words and its derivatives, 2 obscene hand gestures, 5 sexual references, 34 scatological terms, 21 anatomical terms, 19 mild obscenities, name-calling (stupid, sheep farmer, sheepherder, sheepy, crazy, insane, idiot, weird, lazy, jerk, thief, nerd, tool, coward, schmuck, douche, cesspool, dirty-vulgar-deadly West), stereotypical references to Native Americans, Christians, Asians, Muslims, African Americans, Jews, Methodists, western settlers, ranchers, prostitutes, saloon owners, gunslingers, town idiots, carnival vendors, exclamations (shut-up, wow, oh gosh, oh man, oh snap, great scott, heck), 7 religious profanities (GD), 25 religious exclamations (e.g. Oh my God, Jesus Christ, Holy [scatological term deleted], My God, Oh God, God,, Go with God, May God bless you, Jesus, Thank God, Good Lord).
SUBSTANCE USE - A man and a woman share a "pot cookie" (marijuana) and stare at a sunset while she giggles and he freaks out and shouts that a prairie dog can read his mind, a man suffers drug-intoxication at a Native American campfire and sees talking and dancing sheep, and a street vendor attempts to sell a tonic that contains alcohol and cocaine and morphine (no one buys it). Several western saloon scenes feature shelves with bottles of whiskey behind the bar along with full glasses on the bar, tables in a saloon contain glasses and large mugs of beer and whiskey and we see men and a few women drink from their glasses while one woman pours beer from a bottle into a glass and drinks it in close-up, a woman saloon boss drinks a shot of liquor in close-up, a man drinks a large amount of whiskey and rides his horse and he hangs off the saddle, a man and a woman drink from a large bottle of whiskey at night on a ranch, a woman steals a bottle of whiskey and two glasses and has a drink with a man in a drinking contest (he chugs his whiskey more quickly than she does), and men and women sip from glasses of alcoholic beverages. A man smokes a cigarette or small cigar in four saloon scenes as well as on a street and at a ranch, a man puts his cigar into another man's glass of whiskey in a saloon scene, and a man smokes a cigarette for the first time and coughs violently.
DISCUSSION TOPICS - The Old West, ranchers, bandits, gunfights, prostitution, cowardice, courage, conflict, revenge, justice, relationships, love, honesty.
MESSAGE - Find your courage and live the life you want.
CAVEATS
Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.
We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.
Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.
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We welcome suggestions & criticisms -- and we will accept compliments too. While we read all emails & try to reply we do not always manage to do so; be assured that we will not share your e-mail address.