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Red Rock West

1993 American film directed by John Dahl

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 21, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

Red Rock West is a 1993 American independent crime thriller film directed by John Dahl, who cowrote the film's screenplay with his brother Rick. The neo-Western and neo-noir film stars Nicolas Cage, Dennis Hopper, Lara Flynn Boyle and J. T. Walsh. Its plot focuses on a Texas drifter (Cage) who is mistaken for a hitman (Hopper) while traveling through a rural Wyoming community. Filming took place on location primarily in Arizona and Montana in late 1991 to early 1992.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Red Rock West” as 1993 American film directed by John Dahl. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Rock, West and American.

Editorial reviewA productive route into publication, performance and collection histories when the underlying object or edition remains clearly identified. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1993, 1991, 1992—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Rock, West and American providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Red Rock West”, the useful work is to connect “1993 American film directed by John Dahl” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1993, 1991 and 1992.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Red Rock West”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Red Rock West primary sources, Red Rock West archive and Rock research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Red Rock West”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Red Rock West” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.