Wonderful Movie

A lot of fun.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Sam Elliott tosses a dead antelope in front of Kate Capshaw, then delivers that line with a more or less straight face.Talk about double entendre! It's not the ungulate he's referring to.The main reason for seeing this film is Sam Elliott, one of the sexiest men of the last century. (Why no one did a remake of "The Virginian" with him is beyond my comprehension.) He could be William-Conrad tubby and still be good-looking. Here he's spectacularly thin and angular. I wonder how many hetero men harbor a hankerin' for him.The story is nothing special. All the good people live and the bad people die. The dialog rarely rises above the perfunctory.Westerns are rarely detail-accurate. This one shows something hardly ever seen in Westerns -- a chew stick. After dinner, Elliott chews on one to clean his mouth. On the other hand, one of the bad'uns calls Conti's son a "rug rat", a decidedly late-20th-century term. Capshaw mispronounces "cavalry" but the director doesn't catch it. And I wonder how "Kentucky corn liquor" (which is presumably moonshine) can be brown.Not the worst way to kill 90 minutes -- but hardly a great Western.

Sam Elliott's Con Vallian is the classic wandering western frontiersman loner, who keeps popping up to save one lone traveling immigrant family(McKaskels) from a small gang of vultures(shabby Shabitt, kin and associates), who are intent on extracting vengeance for Vallian's killing of one of them when they are about to murder the man of this family(Duncan) for trying to retrieve the two horses they stole from him. Vallian makes clear periodically through the film his reason for wanting to protect this family from harm. He's mightily attracted to the beautiful, wholesome, Suzanna(Kate Capshaw); Duncan's wife. At one point, he catches her alone in the woods and extracts a passionate kiss from the ambivalent Susanna. Although Vallian saves their lives from the Shabitt gang several times, and they help save his life after he is wounded by this gang, Duncan sometimes wishes he would get lost, correctly suspecting he's trying to steal his wife's heart, and fed up with Vallian constantly giving them advice on what to do next, and criticizing Duncan's reluctance to use a firearm. Eventually, they become somewhat more comfortable with each other, after Suzanna assures Duncan that she is not tempted to have an affair with Vallian. It's clear during their parting conversation that Vallian still enjoys the strong admiration of Suzanna, if not her physical intimacy.Vallian might aspire to replace Duncan in Suzanna's life. However, he makes no effort to hasten Duncan's demise, protecting him as well as her from harm. Besides, he wouldn't be willing to settle down as a sedentary family man, even with a fantasy woman like Suzanna. As he details at the end, he has to feel free to wander as he pleases, living life on the edge each day, with occasional opportunistic female encounters: normally with squaws. Vallian supposedly is a half breed, but certainly doesn't look or act it. On the other hand, the supposed half breed Ute, who serves as tracker for the Shabitts, clearly has lived as a Native American, but is clearly played by a full Caucasian.The McKaskels supposedly left their native Ohio to help forget the horrors Duncan witnessed participating in the Civil War. Well, since this story clearly takes place in 1876, dated by the reported current massacre of Custer's 7th cavalry, including Suzanna's brother, they sure took their time escaping the 'dangerous' East. Another big problem with this explanation is that the Big Horn region of northern Wyoming was still regarded, by treaty, as Native American territory: off limits to European settlement. Thus, historically, the story about Suzanna's brother building them a well made cabin (complete with glass windows!) out in the middle of this 'Indian' territory isn't plausible. The NAs would have burned it down, as they had the forts built in this region 10 years earlier. As demonstrated by the 7th cavalry fate, if they were looking for a peaceful hideaway, the Big Horn region wasn't it at this time! The concurrent influx of gold seekers into the Black Hills, to the east of this region, was stirring up renewed conflict between Europeans and NAs in this general region.The 'reluctant buddy' plot device used here is quite common in westerns and comedies. It tends to provide a more interesting screen play than films that feature a pair well attuned to each other..... The feature of a small group of nasty 'hyenas' pursuing a moving target for revenge or profit or both has also been rather common in westerns. Examples from the period of classic Hollywood westerns include : "Wagon Master", "The Cowboys", "Will Penny", "Along the Great Divide", "Ride Lonesome" and "Ride the High Country". Often a sexual encounter with a woman included in the victim party is part of what they want and, often, as in the present case, the woman is forced to learn to use a firearm effectively to help defend herself.The location shooting in northern Arizona provides a scenic surrounds, with varied topography , from red cliffs and spires, to desert vegetation, to thin woods, and sometimes with snow-capped mountains in the background. This is a significant plus for me.

1876, Wyoming. Niave newly arrived settlers Duncan (well played by Tom Conti) and Susanna McKaskel (a fine performance by Kate Capshaw, who looks positively ravishing) require the assistance of rugged frontiersman Con Vallian (a superb and convincing performance by Sam Elliott) in order to protect them from a group of outlaws led by the weaselly Doc Shabitt (veteran character actor Matt Clark in top slimy form). Director Robert Day, working from a smart and engrossing script by James Lee Barrett, relates the absorbing story at a steady pace, presents a flavorsome, yet unsentimental evocation of the old west, and stages the gunfights in a realistic and exciting manner. Con makes for a strong and interesting flawed hero who isn't entirely noble; he has lustful feelings for Susanna and keeps embarrassing Duncan every chance he gets. Moreover, the bad guys are a memorably scurvy lot, with especially memorable turns by Patrick Kilpatrick as fearsome half-breed tracker The Ute and Jerry Potter as the foul and lecherous Red Hayle. Kenny Morrison registers nicely as Duncan's loyal son Tom. Dick Bush's polished cinematography makes elegant occasional use of fades and dissolves. Steven Dorff's harmonic score does the tuneful trick. A worthwhile sagebrush saga.

The kid is called a "rugrat" by the bad guy. Not an 1880s term. Barrett should know better. Otherwise it isn't a bad Western. Thank God they filmed in in the good ol' USA. 1987 was before the Canadian government pulled all the production out of Hollywood.