Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

The Worst Film Ever

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

.... with such heavy make up, J. Frank Burke looks like a snake oil salesman from a wild west show. Also, like "On the Night Stage", players are initially introduced from the stage and sporting evening clothes which then change to wild west attire. I have a feeling it was to give players credibility - even at this stage movies weren't the most respectable form of entertainment and westerns were an even bigger step down. More a case of "yes, I know this is a western but I'm really from the stage - I'm respectable, don't you know"!!! And the performers had every reason to think that way. "The Bargain" is a terrific movie and really moves quickly - but in 1914 critics weren't having it!! "Moving Picture World" thought it "weird and a reckless attempt to revive a genre we hoped was a thing of the past"!! Little did they know the genre was only beginning. Hart was credited with being the founder of the "real West Western" and together he and Thomas Ince soon revived their popularity."The West - Where Man stands face to face with his soul". A typical Hart title - here he plays "Two Gun" Stokes who after a botched stage coach robbery finds himself wounded and on the run in Badlands territory. He finds shelter at the Brents and during his convalescence falls in love with Nell but when they marry a couple of cowboys who are roped in as witnesses recognize him from the wanted pictures. Once he decides to go into town to return the money so he can start married life with a clean slate the action really picks up. He is captured and handed over to the sheriff who takes the money for safe keeping and then decides to pay a visit to the gambling tables!! Within an hour the Sheriff has lost the money but Jim, who is still tied up, proposes a bargain - his freedom, in return for the recovery of the missing money.There are some ruggedly realistic scenes - the flight to evade the posse and double back to the sheriff's room takes Stokes to the edge of a precipice where he and his horse roll down the cliff. It is very harrowing to see the horse fall down the sandy dune but fortunately the horse recovers quickly and trots off. There is also some beautiful location photography of Arizona's Grand Canyon. Clara Williams was often paired as Hart's love interest in these early years, she had a very home spun, westerny look about her but after marrying director Reginald Barker she soon retired and was never tempted to return.

Bargain, The (1914) ** 1/2 (out of 4)After robbing a stagecoach, bandit Jim Stokes (William S. Hart) is shot but manages to make it to a ranch where a woman (Clara Williams) nurses him back to health. Stokes decides to marry the woman and go straight so he returns the stolen money to the Sheriff (J. Frank Burke) but he ends up losing it gambling so he makes a bargain with the bandit to clear both of them. THE BARGAIN probably has more history than entertainment to it but if you're a fan of silent Westerns or Hart then it's still worth viewing. The movie is best remembered today for being an early Paramount picture from producer Thomas H. Ince. It's also remembered for being Hart's first feature-length film but that there is some of the problem with the film. It's funny to see that even at this early part of his career Hart has no problem playing the bad guy willing to turn good for love. I thought Hart was very believable in the part and he managed to work both the good and bad in the character. I've always enjoyed seeing Hart play the bad guy even if the "performance" doesn't have to be that strong. That terrific face of Hart's perfectly gets across the coldness of his characters and he also manages to tell quite a bit with his eyes. The sympathy comes out of his eyes and this is especially true during the sequences where he's trying to make the woman understand that he does want to go straight. Williams is also very good in her role. The character isn't written all that great but the actress manages to be charming and it's easy to see why Hart would fall for her. There's a few action pieces sprinkled throughout but the majority comes towards the end when Hart must go into action over the double-cross. At 70-minutes I think there's no enough story to fully carry the picture as it really doesn't seem more like a three-reeler that has been stretched to the max just to be sold as a "feature", which is something that was common around this period.

After being wounded in a shoot-out, steely-eyed outlaw William S. Hart (as Jim Stokes) is found by prospector J. Barney Sherry (as Phil Brent). Mr. Hart lies to his rescuer, "I was chased by Indians and one of them got me," and is brought back to Mr. Sherry's Arizona cabin. There, Hart recovers from his wound, and falls in love with Sherry's pretty dark-haired daughter Clara Williams (as Nell Brent), who nurses him back to health. Reformed by love and marriage, Hart decides to return the money stolen before he was injured, but he is arrested by Sheriff J. Frank Burke (as Bud Walsh)..."The Bargain" is struck between Hart and Sheriff Burke, who loses the recovered money gambling - if Hart will help him get the money back, the Sheriff will let Hart go free. Variations of this intriguing moral/amoral storyline would be repeated in subsequent Hart features - a few were better, and more than a few were worse; "The Bargain" got there first. The Thomas H. Ince production benefits from the Arizona location photography (shot in the Grand Canyon) by Joseph August. The unusual opening "credits" were not original, but they seem like a perfect introduction to the picture.****** The Bargain (12/3/14) Thomas H. Ince, Reginald Barker ~ William S. Hart, J. Frank Burke, Clara Williams

'The Bargain', a William S. Hart western, is one of the many thousands of silent films which survive only because of the U.S. government's 'paper prints' law, which seemed rather bizarre at the time, but in hindsight may indicate that the U.S. government know what they're doing after all. I'll describe the situation, and you can judge for yourself.In the late 19th century, when movie production companies first tried to copyright their films in the U.S., the Library of Congress stated that only artistic works published on PAPER could be registered for copyright. Movies, being photographed on celluloid, were ineligible. This seems rather a capricious ruling, but perhaps the LoC simply didn't want to accumulate cans of film stock ... which, in those days, were usually highly flammable nitrate-emulsion celluloid. (Although the LoC acquired plenty of nitrate films eventually.) This decision prompted many production companies to make special 'paper print' versions of their films, to be used solely for registering U.S. copyright and for storage in the Library of Congress. Essentially, a paper print reproduces the movie frame-by-frame on long paper streamers rather than celluloid filmstrips. Such prints cannot be projected, but can be bound into books and 'read'.The LoC's decision was borne out when those nitrate prints started to decompose. Many early movies -- including 'The Bargain' -- have no known surviving original film prints, and exist today only because the paper prints registered in the Library of Congress were eventually re-photographed onto acetate-emulsion (safety) film stock. Thank you, Uncle Sam.Unfortunately, some film producers weren't completely honest when registering their movies for copyright. I saw 'The Bargain' in October 2006 at the Cinema Muto festival in Sacile, Italy, where it was screened from an acetate print struck from the paper original. As much as I enjoyed this film, I was more interested in seeing another one which the festival programmers scheduled along with 'The Bargain', a film so rare that it isn't listed in IMDb yet: 'Marceline, the World-Renowned Clown of the N.Y. Hippodrome'. This purported to be the stage act of a famous European clown who was (among other things) Chaplin's mentor. To my great annoyance, the producers of that movie had only bothered to convert the first few frames of their nitrate filmstrip into a paper print for the copyright office ... so the programmers at Cinema Muto could only show us those opening frames, looped several times.SPOILERS AHEAD. 'The Bargain' was made early in William S. Hart's career, but shows his screen character firmly in place. Rather than playing a standard white-hat hero or black-hat varmint, Hart typically played corrupt characters who are reformed in the last reel, usually by the love of a good woman. Here, Jim Stokes (Hart) is a stagecoach robber who's wounded while stealing the express-company's money, but is saved by miner Phil Brent and his pretty daughter Nell. After Jim marries Nell, his past catches up with him ... in the form of sheriff Bud Walsh, determined to bring Jim to justice. Jim has conveniently saved the stolen money all this time, and now he claims that he intends to make restitution ... which I found unlikely, since he was last seen scarpering for the Mexican border when the sheriff caught up with him. Walsh confiscates the money, but manages to lose it while gambling on a crooked roulette wheel. He then offers Jim a bargain: if Jim steals the money back for the sheriff, he'll allow Jim and Nell to escape into Mexico, presumably to live happily ever after.I'm not much of a fan of westerns, but I found this one enjoyable. For once, Hart isn't the only morally ambiguous character: the sheriff who comes after him is just as crooked ... and stupid with it, since he manages to get snookered by a crooked wheel. Having blown the money at the roulette wheel, why didn't the sheriff simply claim that Jim had spent it before the sheriff captured him? The ending is rather contrived: since Walsh sets Jim free to rob the gambling house (with the understanding that Jim is to surrender the winnings to Walsh), there's nothing to prevent Jim from welshing on Walsh by keeping the money AND going free with Nell; because Jim honours the bargain, we accept that his reformation is genuine. I'll rate this intriguing early oater 7 out of 10.