Dwight Yoakam must be a hell of a guy. He's personable in interviews, plays and sings his own music with panache, and did a great job of acting in "Slingblade". He's such a cool guy that he was able to get a lot of his friends to be in a really bad Western.<br /><br />I love a good Western. They're especially scarce these days, but this was not one of them. Most people would consider this movie unwatchable, but I stayed with it because I hoped it would get better.<br /><br />There are a few reasons to see this movie, but not exceptionally strong reasons. One of them was Paul Reuben aka Pee-wee Herman who plays a bad guy named Arvil. That's right - Pee-wee Herman is a bad guy... and he's good at it. I used to make jokes about Pee-wee taking on Chuck Norris in a movie, but after seeing him in this, maybe it's not so far fetched. Reubens does a great job of creating a sadistic, quick tempered little man even with poor direction and writing.<br /><br />Let's talk about the screenplay a little. Dialogue seems clumsy and sluggish. It's as if the language mired that action in General Store bought molasses. My hunch would be that Billy Bob Thorton wrote his own lines because they're not even on the same planet as the rest of the cast in the movie. Thorton is fun to watch, even if I had a hard time understanding what he was saying. Maybe it because I was focusing on the guy playing his sidekick. I didn't see until the credits Thorton's sidekick was the late great songwriter Warren Zevon.<br /><br />What there is of a plot is hard to follow. The whole movie is awkward and unfocused. On the plus side, the scenery is nice and most shots are well lit.<br /><br />"South of Heaven, West of Hell" is inaccurately described as a surreal Western. "El Topo" is a surreal Western (and much better film). Surreal shouldn't be a synonym for sloppy.