Waste of time

How sad is this?

There are women in the film, but none has anything you could call a personality.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Comes a Horseman is directed by Alan J. Pakula and written by Dennis Lynton Clark. It stars Jane Fonda, James Caan, Jason Robards and Richard Farnsworth. Music is by Michael Small and cinematography by Gordon Willis. It seems the ideas and willing behind Comes a Horseman are made of sturdy stuff, you sense that the makers wanted to make a reflective post-modern Western set in post World War II times. Tonally they get it mostly right, it is very sombre, both in characterisations and the changing of the times thematic beat. Plot is hardly thrilling as Robards' land baron plots to oust Fonda and Caan out of their respective homesteads in readiness for the oil company to come destroy the magnificent landscape. Ella Connors (Fonda) is a feisty but vulnerable woman, Frank Athearn (Caan) is fresh out of service in the war and carries the emotional scars of said battles. They form an unsteady alliance to ward off Jacob Ewing (Robards), but as past turmoil's come to the surface it's touch and go as to who, if anyone, will win out. With the Colorado landscape beautifully captured by Willis, and the performances (including an Academy Award Nomination for Farnsworth as Ella's sage old ranch hand) solid as a rock, the pic retains interest if you can tolerate the laborious pace favoured by Pakula. There's a couple of action sequences within, but they feel like afterthoughts, so we are left to buy into the rueful characterisations and their respective attempts at post war living out there on the ranges. 6.5/10

"I heard the second living creature say, 'Come!' Then another horse came out, a fiery red one, its rider given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other." - The Book of Revelations"Comes a Horseman" is an intermittently interesting western by Alan J. Pakula, a director mostly known for his conspiracy movies ("Klute", "All The Presidents Men", "The Parallax View" and the underrated, prophetic "Rollover"). It sports a fairly generic script – land barons bully small land owners off their property – but Pakula does several unorthodox things with the material.And so unlike most westerns, Pakula sets his tale in the American West of the 1940s, and mirrors the war raging in Europe with two ranchers (James Caan and Jane Fonda) who must fend off similar expansionist dreams at home. Meanwhile, the "evil land baron" (Jason Robards, a common face in Westerns) who puts the squeeze on our heroes is himself being pressured by big oil corporations. The "oil drillings", "break-ins", "transgressions", and "penetrations" directed at female rancher Jane Fonda's land by ex-lover Robards then take on a psycho-sexual tinge. She's earthly, feminine, of the land, and all her interactions with Robards play like the traumatic confrontations between a rape victim and her tormentor.The film contains two great scenes – a bizarre meal shared over a tiny table, and an early, shocking murder – but is mostly slow and lackadaisically paced. Pakula's visuals are pretty but stiff, and the film's final act is terrible, thanks to last minute rewrites and heavy studio interference.The film features the always likable Richard Farnsworth (most famous for his roles in "The Straight Story" and "The Grey Fox") in a bit part, and some of the best horse riding and wrangling sequences in the genre. A stunt rider was killed during Pakula's production, but the actors do much of the riding themselves. The film offers a fairly low-key, realistic portrait of life on a ranch, but Pakula generic plot too often gets in the way of these more authentic moments.7/10 – Worth one viewing.

I'm a fan of the late Alan J Pakula's naturalist style of direction, low on action but high on character, particularly his earlier contemporary political thrillers "The Parallax View" and of course "All The President's Men" and so came to this low-key out-west drama set during the second world war, (not that you'd know from the storyline itself). With an A-list acting cast boasting James Caan, Jane Fonda & Jason Robards you just know there's going to be a fair bit of intensity on display. In fact Fonda, despite being on screen from pretty much the start takes ages to utter her first line and it's fair to say that the director employs the "say more with less" approach throughout.The plot, characters and indeed cinematography recall to mind classic films of yore, like Hawks' "Red River", Stevens' "Giant" and even a touch of "Gone With The Wind" with the fire at the conclusion, but the action is a little laboured, with, to these ears slow-talking, drawling dialogue quite often proving fairly difficult to decipher. The camera however picks out some wonderful scenery in natural clear light and throughout there's a sympathetic musical soundtrack adding shading to the pictures up front.Back to the plot, which is a little melodramatic, I fear, with its casual slaughter of various individuals and depiction of Jason Robards as the smouldering resentful villain of the piece - I found all this much harder to swallow in its mid-40's settings than if it had been set in the old west. Ditto in fact all the other main characters - if it wasn't for the appearance of the oil derricks, light aircraft and contemporary cars, this story could have happily slotted into a mid 1860's time-line.Of the acting, it's obvious that Pakula is going to get his handsome leading couple romantically involved although when it's done it's at least done without preamble, subverting the romantic courtship ritual of every other western since the year dot. Caan is fine as the strong-willed individual well able to look after himself (he early on dispatches a couple of Robards' thugs in short order in one of the few action scenes in the film), at least willing to consider adapting to the present-day, while Fonda is probably a bit too mannered in her portrayal of the independent single woman being driven to sell up her ranch by a combination of failing resources and Robards' machinations. She overplays occasionally with her eyes acting more than the rest of her, especially when she swears her "Damn your soul" oath against Robards. Robards himself, late of "All The President's Men", of course, does moody and stolid throughout, with sometimes variable results.In summary then, a slow-moving but reasonably involving tale of the new old-west, which could have stood more enlivening in my opinion.

Director Alan J. Pakula and cinematographer Gordon Willis, masters at capturing urban paranoia, give this post-WWII western a lachrymose solemnity; while both men may have been quite taken with the western clichés that litter Dennis Lynton Clark's screenplay, they keep the mood so sorrowful that the characters never quite emerge. Indeed, Clark's script seems to begin after the central drama has already been played out. Land baron Jason Robards, embittered by the death of his son and holding a decades-long grudge against rancher Jane Fonda, is in unhappy cahoots with oil drillers, and all want Fonda off her land so they can start getting rich. The picture is sleepy-slow and only half-realized, with Pakula's lofty ambitions clashing with Clark's writing, which is occasionally crass. Some good scenes (including Fonda and James Caan dancin' the Texas Star), pretty locales and a decent score from Michael Small can't really make film worthwhile. ** from ****