John Travolta's Underseen 2016 Western With Ethan Hawke Should Have Never Flopped

Long before the box office smash that is "Michael" there was John Travolta's fantasy romantic comedy of the same name, a film that proudly sported the tagline, "He's an angel, not a saint." Now, if you're a fan of the legend, you'll know his career is full of incredible little moments like that, often in the form of entire films which have earned Travolta the distinction of having a full seven 0%-rated films on Rotten Tomatoes. Nearly all of these duds are late-career Travolta movies but that doesn't mean his entire recent filmography is full of wonderfully amusing missteps. Take, "In a Valley of Violence," his 2016 Western with Ethan Hawke which despite failing to make back its budget managed to win over most critics.

"In a Valley of Violence" came in the lead-up to Travolta's passion project, a biopic of notorious mobster John Gotti in which he played the lead role. Unfortunately, "Gotti" became one of his 0-percenters, but had the actor put all his promotional effort into his 2016 Western instead, he might have helped it make some money. But then, he's not actually in the film all that much, despite being the main antagonist. 

Instead, Ethan Hawke is the star here, playing a mysterious stranger archetype who embarks on a revenge mission after his faithful pup is killed. Unlike "Gotti," "In a Valley of Violence" was deserving of a little more attention than it actually got, even if it wasn't quite a triumph of the sort its director, Ti West, would deliver in the years after. Still, a John Wick-style Old West revenge thriller directed by West and starring Ethan Hawke? That was never going to join the Travolta 0% list.

Prior to delivering the slick and stunning original slasher "X," director Ti West took us to the weird, weird West with "In a Valley of Violence." The film, which West also wrote, is an outlier in his filmography, mainly because it isn't a horror movie (even though Jason Blum served as producer). Instead, West set out to emulate the great Spaghetti Westerns of the mid 20th Century, and while he didn't quite make the next "Fistful of Dollars," he did manage to produce a film that earned a 78% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes — which is something late career John Travolta could have only dreamed of prior to agreeing to star.

The thing is, Travolta isn't actually the star, Ethan Hawke is. He plays a drifter named Paul who alongside his dog, Abbie, journeys through the Old West on his way to Mexico. While on their travels, the pair find themselves in the town of Denton, a once thriving mining hub that has since been largely forgotten and mostly abandoned. Travolta's U.S. Marshal Clyde Martin oversees the town and its last remaining inhabitants, which include his son, the seemingly untouchable bully Deputy Marshal Gilly Martin (James Ransone). It doesn't take long for Paul to fall afoul of Gilly, but it takes even less time for Hawke's mysterious stranger to drop the younger Martin with a swift right hook.

This leads to the plot of John Wick playing out in the Old West. Gilly and his dimwitted cohorts kill Abbie, causing all hell to break loose as Paul sets out for revenge, ultimately leading to a third act that's basically one big shootout. If it sounds silly, it is. But it's also pretty entertaining, as attested to by the critical response.

"In a Valley of Violence" premiered at the 2016 SXSW festival ahead of a limited theatrical and video-on-demand release later that year. Sadly, the movie brought in just $61,797 at the domestic box office, though it made an extra $1.6 million in DVD and Blu-ray sales. Budget figures aren't available but you can bet the film wasn't made for all that much. Still, Ti West surely hoped for a little more commercial success. Or perhaps he didn't, since the film impressed several critics.

Sheila O'Malley of RogerEbert.com awarded "In a Valley of Violence" three stars and noted how the film "does not take itself too seriously (a great asset), but it also takes itself just seriously enough that it's not empty snarky parody." That's exactly the kind of balance that made Sergio Leone's Westerns so successful 50 years prior. What's more, O'Malley was very impressed with John Travolta, writing, "Something happens when Travolta gets engaged with material and given circumstances. It's movie magic, plain and simple." That's a heck of a result for the man who followed up "In a Valley of Violence" with the 10-percenter "I Am Wrath."

Other reviewers were similarly impressed. Michael Rechtshaffen of the Los Angeles Times found West's film to be "smartly cast" and "mighty entertaining" while the Austin Chronicle's Marc Savlov praised what was a "departure from West's usual run of seriously freaky spook shows" as a "brilliant piece of work." It's fair to say, then, that while it might not be one of the best Westerns of the 21st Century, "In a Valley of Violence" didn't deserve to flop in the way that it did. Luckily, the film is available to stream for free over on Tubi.