It’s not often that a lauded film-maker follows the most high-profile work of his career with a short based on a videogame. You have to wonder how the deal was done for John Hillcoat, coming off his Viggo Mortensen-starring adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (review here), to direct a half-hour work ‘filmed’ entirely within the engine of Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption. Presumably someone in marketing at Rockstar saw Hillcoat’s work (2005′s The Proposition was praised as a good modern entry in the Western genre) and called him up. Out the deal they get a substantial half-hour advert for their game and then have that advert talked about in places the game otherwise may not have been covered. But was does Hillcoat stand to gain? One doesn’t like to think that he’s in it simply for the money, and when I first read about the project I was intrigued to see what kind of story a film director would play out in Rockstar’s latest, dustiest sandbox.

The truth is Hillcoat doesn’t seem to have contributed all that much. Having played ~17 hours of Red Dead Redemption by the time I saw The Man From Blackwater I was already familiar with pretty much everything that the short contains. Essentially Hillcoat has taken the story arc of the game’s first act, stripped it down to something a little less complicated, and made a short film out of the cutscenes strung together with b-roll and establishing shots. In some cases scenes are viewed from a different angle than you encounter them in the game and to an extent you can sense a cinematic eye behind some of those choices. There’s no doubt that the piece is atmospheric and engaging but that has more to do with Rockstar’s world-building, characters and writing than anything Hillcoat brings. It ends up feeling like an easy paycheque for the director.

If you’ve played the game you’ve seen everything here and probably been far more engaged with the material for having been involved in the action yourself, and if you intend to play the game the film will only spoil the first third of the story for you. If you have no intention of picking up a controller yourself however, it’s a good opportunity for you to meet John Marston and a few of the interesting cast of characters that populate Rockstar’s epic; after which perhaps you’ll want to find a friend you can watch play the game so you can see the rest of the story.

[Click through to watch the short film.]