Review: Female Empowerment Indie Western, CASSIDY RED, Hits Its Mark
You work in film long enough and set goals, and eventually you find your way to a director’s chair. Such is the case with debut writer and director Matt Knudsen, fourteen years in film and having worn multiple hats over the years as he now emerges proudly with crowdfunded Western drama, Cassidy Red. The story is largely infused with a feminist subtext focused on women amid their struggle to co-exist in the male-dominated late 1800s Old West. Toggling between varying parts of a 36 year timeline, we meet lounge pianist Cricket (Gregory Zaragoza) who obliges an exasperated hostess named Quinn (Jessy Knudsen) looking to unwind at the day’s end. At the stroke of his piano keyboard, Cricket transports you back in time to the height of our heroine’s search for vengeance for the presumed murder of her true love at the hands of the man she once would have married. […]