Starring: Jeff Grennell, Steve Graf, Debra Lamb, Jesse Marciniak, Vernon Wells

Director: Aaron Bratcher
Released: 2023

Mood: If you’ve been feeling down and out and really need a Western that will raise your spirits while still delivering on plenty of action.

I genuinely couldn’t wait to review Showdown in Yesteryear – and that hasn’t happened with a movie in months. MONTHS!

I had read all of the high-praise reviews on IMDb shortly before putting it on, and I thought, “No way can it be that good. Those must be from like, friends and family.”

But here I am, ready to add more fuel to the ratings fire. Showdown in Yesteryear is a captivating blend of comedy, action, and surprisingly heartfelt storytelling. It’s got all of the ingredients we expect in a good Western, but also presents a fantastical fresh take thanks, in part, to producer/writer/actor Tim O’Hearn’s love of The Twilight Zone.

If you get hooked on the lead character within the first few minutes, as I did, the ending will totally pay off and this will instantly become a movie you plan to watch over and over again. Read on for the full review, including insights from O’Hearn himself.

Showdown in Yesteryear begins with an older man named Daryl (Jeff Grennell), wearing thick glasses and a sweet-ass moustache, shovelling manure in a modern barn and talking to the horses.

Right away, you feel empathy for Daryl. You can tell from his mannerisms that he’s not the bravest, or the coolest, and if you’re a misfit you will relate so hard. The character’s underdog quality is similar to Bill Pullman’s gentle, bumbling Lefty in The Ballad of Lefty Brown.

Daryl goes home to find his girlfriend moving out with her new boyfriend, a muscular meathead type. She berates Daryl for his ‘sad’ life, watching John Wayne movies and dreaming of being a cowboy. Not long after, Daryl loses his job due to a lack of money at the ranch.

There’s this entire sequence of slow, beautifully shot scenes that I won’t spoil for you, but trust that I was UGLY CRYING MY ASS OFF as it played out. Daryl pretty much gives up on life. Then, at the last moment, he sees a self-standing door in the middle of a field.

He falls through the door and faceplants into the Old West. At first, he thinks it’s a theme park, including a meta reference to Westworld. But it quickly becomes clear that he’s actually fallen through time, into a town that’s under the grip of not one but TWO bad guys.

With no way home, the meek, gentle-hearted Daryl is put to the ultimate test. Can he step up and be the brave cowboy he always thought he would be, if he’d been born in the right time?

Jeff Grennell is my new favourite actor.

He’s in almost every scene in Showdown in Yesteryear, so any weakness on his part would have tanked the entire production. Grennell delivers an astoundingly nuanced performance that gives you aching emotion, subtle comedy, rugged action, and everything in between.

Sure, I need to recognize my instant bias due to his excellent moustache. But I stand behind my conviction that this is strong acting. Grennell gives you this childlike joy and fragile positivity that make Daryl’s dark moments, and his later physicality, have so much more impact.

• Fun Fact #1: Jeff Grennell rides his own horse in the movie, and did his own stunts including all of the shooting, the fights, and falling off his horse numerous times. “[We] were supposed to catch him but Jeff didn’t hit his mark, fell short and really fell to the ground. When you see that in the film at the end of his ‘learning to ride’ montage, the thud and grunt you hear are real!” said O’Hearn. You can see more on that in the behind-the-scenes featurette.

One of my favourite Daryl moments is when he gets some proper oldschool cowboy clothes. He’s walking down the street looking tough and serious and right out of Tombstone, but then in the next shot he’s sitting on a bench, swinging his feet and grinning like a kid.

There isn’t a weak link in the rest of the cast, either. From the supporting actors to the extras, everyone feels cohesive.

• Fun Fact #2: Showdown in Yesteryear was shot in just 18 days at Dogwood Pass, an Old West town in Ohio. Some of the cast are Dogwood Pass employees, who are total pros at doing reenactments and actually inspired O’Hearn to make this movie after filming another one there. “I had fallen in love with the Dogwood location and really liked the people there. I started thinking of a movie of my own that we could shoot there. That’s when I came up with the script for The Door, a 15-minute short film I did that led to Showdown In Yesteryear.”

Mike Montgomery is my other favourite, playing Daryl’s boss, Steve. In just a few scenes and with minimal dialogue Montgomery gives you a stoic, rugged rancher with a kind heart and a fine moustache. You can really feel his backstory.

Steve Graf as Sheriff Dobbs feels authentic for the period, and guess what – he also has a note-worthy ‘stache.

• Okay let’s just get this out of the way: There is SO MUCH GREAT FACIAL HAIR in this movie. Many of the moustaches rival those on my ranking of the best moustaches in Westerns. I was in moustache heaven the entire time. Now we can move on.

In Jesse Marciniak’s first scenes as The Beast he has a wild-eyed, psychopathic intensity that’s a bit like Ben Foster, especially in close-ups and despite some slightly distracting guyliner. Marciniak is consistently nasty, while delivering pleasing levels within that nastiness.

Meanwhile, Vernon Wells as Orson Kane is just right for the other villainous role. He brings a slower, refined manner that balances The Beast’s mania, and his craggy face is perfect for this sort of character.

Debra Lamb as Marion balances all that testosterone with a practical, no-nonsense, independent woman – one who is an appropriate and believable age for the hero, which is a refreshing rarity in Westerns.

Pretty much every single other actor also gives you something memorable, from The Kid and Deputy Harris to the Bartender (who I just realized is director Aaron Bratcher), Harper, Doby (O’Hearn), and the rest of The Beast’s posse.

• Fun Fact #3: The cast and crew lived in Dogwood Pass while shooting. “There are bunk houses out back with beds, running water, and MOST of the comforts of home. [It’s] easy to stay in character when you are living it every day. It’s like being a child and playing cowboy for 18 days,” said O’Hearn. But not everyone was there the whole time. “Scheduling was a huge challenge. We only had Vernon Wells for three days, Jesse Marciniak for five days, and Debra Lamb for three days. It was like 3D chess, trying to make sure we had the right people scheduled for the right days.”

Showdown in Yesteryear has some seriously polished cinematography going on. The maddest of mad props to Bratcher and everyone else involved in the camerawork and editing.

The opening credits feature a gorgeous sequence of horses in a field, blending regular speed and slow motion shots that, paired with the great score, do a fantastic job of setting expectations for the rest of the movie.

The way the natural landscape is filmed is particularly well-done, utilizing sunsets and night skies and subtle moments, like a chain clip swinging in the breeze or a flattened coffee cup on a highway, to instantly immerse you in the moments and places. There are also lots of impressive action shots, overhead views, and detail-rich wide shots.

But where it really excels are the thoughtful close-ups. That’s where you truly get to know Daryl, and feel his pain, and understand his motivation. I legit rewound and played several of them back, just to appreciate the way they were shot.

My only qualms about the entire production are few and pretty nit-picky: the aforementioned modern eye shadow on The Beast; a shiny black corset worn over a period-appropriate white dress; and we only got to see Daryl learning to fire a pistol, but then in the huge shootout he’s spinning a rifle one-handed to reload it like a total badass. But I enjoyed Daryl the badass, so it was real easy to forgive.

Showdown in Yesteryear amassed 22 awards from the festival circuit, most of which you can see on IMDb. It’s genuinely deserving of the praise you’ll see in this and other reviews – “The journey of a lifetime,” as Grennell called it in the BTS featurette.

Currently there is only one online naysayer, on Rotten Tomatoes, calling it “formulaically-obvious.” For starters, dude, it’s grammatically incorrect to hyphenate a word that ends in ‘ly’. And if the story had ended any other way than how it did, my heart would have been wrenched from my body and I would have lost all hope for anything in life, ever.

SPOILER ALERT AHEAD. When I thought it was going to end with it all being a dream, I was gutted. All of my notes during those scenes were just me shouting variations of “WHY” and “NOOOO” through my keyboard.

You can see the trailer for Showdown in Yesteryear on YouTube, and find the full movie on Hoopla, Tubi, Prime, and Fandango at Home. I don’t recommend using Tubi unless you have to, though. The constant interruption of perky ads really hurts the expertly crafted mood. This is such a good movie, and one that I will gladly put on and sob through again.