With the talk of rolling beef along dry, dusty land and the abundant appeal to a sense of 'manliness' I wasn't expecting some of the nice touches. My favourites were:

• Cherry gently being set up as a mysterious, almost scowling character, likely to combust in jealous rivalry with clean cut Matt or have a pre-planned notion of betrayal. But then Cherry actually picking Matt over Dunson and being a dependable soul with good moral judgment right until the closing scene (where he gets shot but strangely nobody seems to care if the wound was fatal or not). But anyway, it was some nice misdirection that played out fairly automatically because just enough time was given over to seeing Cherry and Matt's relationship.

• Matt betraying Dunson, but immediately letting slip a little line about "not setting out to do it" and "things happening so fast"; but clearly he had to see through what he had set in motion. This just about pushed the door ajar for an unusual ending to be believable (in tandem with the time given over to showing Dunson noting parallels between himself and Matt)

There were elements that were less credible, for example, Matt wanting to be a surrogate son to a man who was shown to be as ugly as Dunson was. But this film could show films 70 years younger how to develop characters and adjust their motivations and mindsets. Not sure if the author or the director deserves the credit.

7/10