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A Million Ways to Die in the West(2014)
Universal Pictures May 30, 2014 | Wide
As a cowardly farmer begins to fall for the mysterious new woman in town, he must put his newly found courage to the test when her husband, a notorious gun-slinger, announces his arrival.
Releases
Original Release | May 30, 2014
Box Office
Results
$16,797,385
$43,139,300
$44,050,456
$87,189,756
Director & Top Cast
Technical Specifications
Sound Mix: SDDS,Datasat,Dolby Digital
Aspect Ratio: 2.39 : 1
Other Details
Country of Origin: United States
Language: English,Navajo,Mandarin
Summaries
Plot Summary
- In 1882, the town of Old Stump, Arizona, is the American frontier of the West. Life is hard as food is hard to come by and disease is rampant. Law enforcement is unheard of and men are routinely lynched by self-proclaimed protectors of the law. A cowardly sheep farmer named Albert Stark (Seth MacFarlane) is dumped by his beloved girlfriend Louise (Amanda Seyfried) as a result of his withdrawal from a duel. Albert wanted to sit down and find a peaceful solution to the dispute, but the challenger Charlie was in no mood to relent. Albert is given 2 days by Charlie to sell his sheep and come up with the money to make good the losses that Albert caused Charlie. Louise says that Albert should have fought Charlie and adds that Albert is not even a good sheep farmer as his sheep roams all over the place.Albert lives with his parents Elsie (Jean Effron) and George (Christopher Hagen). Edward (Giovanni Ribisi) is Albert's best friend and Ruth's (Sarah Silverman) boyfriend. Ruth is a prostitute. Millie (Alex Borstein) runs the brothel where Ruth works. Edward is a shoe salesman and is OK with Ruth having sex with 15 guys each day and getting paid to do it. Edward has never had sex with Ruth as Ruth wants to wait till she gets married. Albert prepares to leave for San Francisco, believing that the frontier holds nothing for him. He says that out on the frontier everyone wants to kill everyone else, outlaws, angry drunk people, scorned prostitutes, hungry animals, cholera, or even the doctor. The town pastor Wilson (John Aylward) killed 2 people and then killed the dead man's son to prevent the possibility of a revenge when he grows up. The miners inhale poisonous gases in the mines. The Mayor's dead body has not been moved for a week.Meanwhile, infamous outlaw Clinch Leatherwood (Liam Neeson) robs and kills an old prospector for a nugget of gold. The prospector was willing to part with the gold, but Clint wanted to shoot for it. He makes the old man pick up his gun, to shoot at 3, but then Clint cheats and shoots at 2, killing the old man. He orders one of his men, Lewis (Evan Jones), to escort his wife Anna (Charlize Theron) to Old Stump to lie low while he continues his banditry. Clint promises to come pick-up Anna in 12 days. Anna doesn't like that Clinch is a bully but is unable to oppose him as everybody in the gang worships Clinch. Louise is now dating her new boyfriend Foy (Neil Patrick Harris), who owns a mustache accessory shop & is filthy rich (having a mustache in 1882 is expensive business with the creams, the waxes and the lotions required to maintain it). Meanwhile Albert has paid off Charlie but is now too depressed and has not left his sheep farm for several days. Edward drags Albert to town.Lewis and Anna arrive in Old Stump under the guise of two siblings intending to build a farm, but Lewis is arrested after shooting Charlie in a saloon after Charlie knocked over Lewis's drink and refused to apologize. During the ensuing brawl, Albert saves Anna from being crushed by two of the brawlers and the two form a friendship & Anna even agrees to help Albert to try and win Louise back. Anna learns that Louise and Foy are going to the country fair and offers to accompany Albert. She says that Louise will be jealous when she sees Albert with a smoking hot girl like herself.Anna visits Lewis in lockup and makes her disgust for Clint clear to Lewis and says that she hopes Clint meets a faster shooter who shoots him dead. She knows that Lewis will be hanged much before Clint ever reaches town.They attend a county fair at which Albert says that accidents happen routinely, and people die. Anna is introduced to Louise and Foy, and Anna says that she is having regular intercourse with Albert. Louise's new boyfriend, the foppish Foy, challenges Albert to a shooting contest at the shooting gallery. Albert is defeated, but Anna steps up and defeats Foy. Foy insults Albert, who angrily challenges Foy to a duel in a week's time. Anna tells Albert that Louise is aroused to see the fight in Albert.Anna teaches Albert how to shoot. Anna also teaches Albert to respect himself & says that Louise is not doing him a favor by dating him. She says that Albert is a guy with many virtues & that any girl would be lucky to have him. During a barn dance the night before the duel, Anna slips Foy a Mickey. After leaving the dance, Albert and Anna kiss before heading home. Upon breaking out of jail and murdering the sheriff, Lewis sees the kiss and reports it to Clinch. On the day of the duel, Foy arrives late and goes into convulsions due to the laxative he had unknowingly imbibed. Albert, who has decided that Louise is not worth the trouble, once again forfeits the duel.He retires to the saloon, but Clinch arrives and demands to know who kissed his wife. When no one comes forward, Clinch shoots a nearby cowboy. He reveals that Anna is his wife and threatens to continue killing unless his wife's lover duels him at noon the next day. Clinch later compels Anna to reveal Albert's name and then prepares to have sex with her, but she knocks him unconscious and escapes.Anna returns to Albert's farm where he confronts her. Clinch pursues Anna to the farm and recaptures her, but Albert escapes. While fleeing, he is captured by a tribe of Indians who threaten to burn him to death. The Indians spare him when he reveals that he can speak their language. They give him a bowl of Peyote, which sends him flashing back to his birth and through traumatic events of his childhood before making him realize that he loves Anna.Albert returns to Old Stump and confronts Clinch. He wounds Clinch with a bullet poisoned with rattlesnake venom before having his own gun shot out of his hand but manages to stall until Clinch lethally succumbs to the poison. Louise attempts to win back Albert, but he rejects her and instead enters a relationship with Anna. Albert also receives a bounty for killing Clinch and uses the money to buy more sheep.At the fair, the proprietor of a racially charged shooting game asks who would like to take a shot. Django Freeman (Jamie Foxx) steps up and shoots the man while commenting that a lot of people die at the fair.
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Storyline
- Set in 1882 in the American west, Albert is a lowly farmer with a nice girlfriend. But when she leaves him for the more successful and handsome owner of a moustachery store, Albert returns to his lonely daily life of trying to avoid death. Then the mysterious Anna rides into town and captures Albert's interest and heart, but with her deadly husband in town, Albert is going to have to become the western gun-slinging hero he never was. It won't be easy because there are a million ways to die in the west. — Anne Campbell 1882. Albert Stark, a mild mannered sheep farmer living outside of Old Stump, Arizona, hates everything about living in this time and place, especially the literally million ways he and others can easily die every day without a care, from shoot-outs, to bar brawls, to bites by rattlesnakes hiding in outhouses, to affliction by any one of numerous untreatable plagues and pestilences. He is also not adept at shooting guns, which makes the death by shoot-outs even more likely, and is the reason why he cowers out of a shoot-out with someone to whom he owes money. Although she states otherwise, the shoot-out is arguably the last straw for Louise, Albert's vain girlfriend, who breaks up with him. Her "it's not you, it's me" reason rings false as she quickly starts up with mustachioed Foy, the wealthy owner of a mustache grooming products store, he who Albert knows he cannot compete in not being wealthy enough to be able to grow a groomed mustache. Albert is befriended by Anna, along with her "brother" Lewis who are new to Old Stump, and she who is self-admittedly "smokin' hot". Anna vows to help Albert with many issues in his life, most specifically in getting Louise back largely by pretending to be his girlfriend to make Louise jealous, and learning how to shoot in what ends up being a challenge to a shoot-out with Foy for Louise's hand. As Albert and Anna start to fall for each other in the process, Anna has to decide if and when she will tell him the truth: that she is already married, albeit unhappily, to Clinch Leatherwood, a vicious outlaw who, along with his gang, she and Lewis are waiting for in Old Stump. Albert, in turn, has to decide when he will become a real man in doing what he needs for what, or who, he truly wants in life. — Huggo Constantly terrified, the meek and lily-livered sheep farmer, Albert Stark, mainly struggles to stay out of trouble in dusty and dangerous 1880s Arizona, utterly convinced that everything out there can and will kill him. And then, for a good reason, Albert gets dumped by his charming girlfriend, Louise, only to fall head over heels in love with the intriguingly mysterious, horse-riding and pistol-packing stranger, Anna. Unexpectedly, Anna and Albert have a genuine connection--and as our unassuming hero learns the fundamentals of survival in the inhospitable wild west--an ironic, yet grave challenge against an unforeseen and mighty adversary demands that he puts to the test his newly found abilities. But, just how many ways to die are there in the west? — Nick Riganas The American West, 1880s. A passive, shy sheep farmer tries to avoid conflict, a trait which has kept him alive but has now resulted in his girlfriend leaving him. She is now with a dapper, successful, extroverted store owner, Foy, a fact Foy keeps reminding him of. When the rivalry leads to a duel, he gets help from an unexpected, beautiful source. — grantss 1 more All