Sadly Over-hyped

Better Late Then Never

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

To call this quirky, brooding film a western is a failure of imagination since it is nothing less than a classical tragedy, a sort of Hamlet set in the American west circa 1875. "Silent Tongue" is a Sam Sheppard film with a stout cast and ambitious themes. It is helped toward that end by the venerable talents of Alan Bates as a drunken Irish thespian and snake oil salesman (what a great archetype) along with Richard Harris as the desperate father of a young man lost in madness from grieving the death of his Indian wife. It does not hurt that the screenplay's characters sometimes speak with the cadence and tone of formal 17th Century English mixed with a touch of cowboy colloquy. It helps even more that there are murderous ghosts and allusions to suicide. After about 30 minutes of trying to get a peg to hang my movie genre hat on, I was left with a question. "WTF is going on here?" That is why eventually I gave up and accepted it for what it was--a Shakespearian western. Aside from that, its a slow stroll with lots of dramatic flourishes and an unexpected touch of Grand Guignol. Dermott Mulroney and River Phoenix are evident in support. Native American actress Sheila Tousey is absolutely terrific. Watch it but in the right mood.

For me, this was an exercise in torture. I found it to be pretentious. Waaaaaaay over the top dramatically. Repulsive to look at. Bad acting. Bad dialogue. Almost as bad as Buried Child. I was reminded of The Emperor's New Clothes. People really do like to think of themselves as sophisticated, don't they...... A root canal would have been less painful. Oh, I particularly enjoyed the use of fingernails. Made me crave a manicure.

Although it's rated as "western" and the story happens during "bang bang times", "Silent Tongue" is much of a supernatural drama than anything else. It was kind of sad watching it just a few days after Richard Harris' death. It's also sad seeing River Phoenix in such good phase of his career considering that now his is (unfortunately) dead. We will always miss Harris and Phoenix.The film itself is not so great. The plot is interesting and I really like the cast, but the movie is a little slow. We always expect something explosive to happen, but nothing really does. The symbolism is nice. There are quite a lot of them in the movie. It's just a matter of paying close attention and let your mind work on them. My rate 6/10

Sam Shepard, the writer/director of "Silent Tongue," is one of the big names in contemporary American theatre. So it comes as no surprise that his two feature films (also, "Far North") have a distinctly theatrical tone. General audiences may not have a taste for his style, but Shepard's films richly reward multiple viewings for the open-minded."Silent Tongue" is a ghost story which uncovers a disturbing sickness at the heart of the Old West. River Phoenix becomes mentally unhinged when his Native American bride dies in childbirth. This sends his father, Richard Harris, on a journey to try and find another woman for his son. Exhibiting tragically limited imagination, the father returns to the traveling circus where he traded horses for the first woman, and he attempt a second bargain for the woman's sister. In the end, the sister must confront the dead woman's ghost, and we learn the dark secret of their past.Phoenix is eerily convincing as the mad Talbot Roe, and Richard Harris is uncharacteristic low-key as the world-weary Prescott Roe. Dermot Mulroney, unable to make his character's diction convincing, is perhaps the film's only casting error.