Cohen Holloway in GOOD FOR NOTHING (Screen Media Films)

According to the press notes, the filmmaking debut by Mike Wallis is not only the first Western to be shot entirely in New Zealand, but it’s also the first self-funded feature film to achieve theatrical release in the U.S. While I slightly doubt the latter claim (Peter Jackson’s early films, anyone?), it’s still a fine assertion to come out as the first Western in that nation’s history by the year 2012.

But to be honest, I was put off at first by the premise. Here’s the best I can explain it: a mysterious Man-With-No-Name™ (Cohen Holloway) arrives in a small town in the Old West, shoots some fellers in a bar, and takes a woman, an English lass named Isabella Montgomery (Inge Rademeyer), as his prisoner. When he tries to have his way with her, lo and behold, he can’t get it up.

What to do? How about go across the plains, deserts, and mountains and find a) a doctor, b) a Chinese witch doctor, and c) a Native American medicine man to fix his broken you-know-what. Meanwhile, Isabella keeps trying to escape, and at one point gets ensnared by a no-good sheriff, who is quickly shot and killed by The Man. Then the sheriff’s brother gathers a posse together to track down The Man and Isabella for a bounty.

It’s a one-note joke that is amusing mostly because of the stoic Holloway, but then the movie keeps on going and going. Though, the relationship between The Man and Isabella works better than I expected—which was something lurid and/or a case of the Stockholm syndrome, where she would fall for her captor. It’s not quite the case, and I respect the filmmakers for that. Yet there is still something fairly daft about the premise that just doesn’t sit well.

Wallis clearly loves his Westerns—particularly the Leone knack for the dichotomy of wide landscape shots and extreme close-ups on faces—but he can’t decide whether his film should be deadpan or serious or a comedy. Some parts are funny, such as little bits with the bumbling morons of a posse following the Man and Isabella. Other scenes, such as when she tries to escape with the help of two Chinese workers, fall terribly flat due to the ill-timed slapstick and exaggerated caricatures.

In the climax, the film almost comes alive with well-choreographed gunplay, and there are hints it could have taken a different, more risky route in the connection between the Man and Isabella, and not necessarily romantically. But Wallis falls back on the conventional outcome, with maybe one saving grace involving some wicked injuries (saying more would be spoiler heavy). He has a decent, if empty, lead in Holloway and a better leading lady in his wife, star Rademeyer, and director of photography Matthew Knight can sure shoot a valley or campfire scene. If Wallis had just completely gone over the top, it could have worked, or if he had nixed the erectile dysfunction stuff and left it as a straight, no-frills Western. As it is, it’s an admirable mixed bag.