Dead Souls

If it lacks the operatic excesses of this particular subgenre, it does an interesting job of recasting those elements into something closer to an intimate chamber piece.

The film’s small budget shows in the flat cinematography and stagy performances, but this effect — in which Wild West intrigue comes off as comically wooden — also vibes with Cox’s metacommentary on cinema and his own place within its lineage. These details will almost certainly be lost on those unfamiliar with the director’s shtick. Meet Cox halfway, however, and “Dead Souls” makes for a riotous swan song.

Juggling slapstick humour, political critique, trigger-happy action and surreal tangents, Dead Souls does not always hang together comfortably. Cox has made better films, but this offbeat frontier fable is still a charmingly eccentric, mischievous late-career effort with an impressively strong authorial voice.

Is it a good movie? No, not really. But it’s one that inspires me to imagine — as every Alex Cox movie does — the glory of what might have been.