Must See Movie...

Great Film overall

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

I watched this film not because I came across a title called Tom Horn.I didn't know Tom Horn.I wasn't familiar with the director either.I watched this film because of McQueen,and I knew that this was almost his last film.While watching it I couldn't help making parallels between the personage of Tom Horn by the time that story happened and that of McQueen at the time the film was made. Two larger than life characters who have reached the end of the line. For the spectator who has seen McQueen as the unbeatable hero of The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape,watching him carrying the rifle ,tracking down the rustlers while catching his breath,running heavily,but yet never missing a target, is hard to accept.As the film also reaches its end,showing Horn getting arrested,his look gazed at the mountains afar through the bars of the jail window,his bright eyes,his calm face,you realize that this is not a defeat. The pale face,all that weakness and physical fragility works as transparent through which the inner light and strength of that mixture of Horn-McQueen comes out and shines.And when he steps up the stairs of his execution,what a forgiving smile at the face of the enemy,what a victory over death.A man who makes even dying look cool.

I'd been waiting for some time to finally catch this on the Encore Western Channel and now that I've seen it I'm sadly underwhelmed. The real Tom Horn was one of the most tragic gunfighters of the Old West, but the story here only deals with the last couple years of his life, just as it's star was sadly winding down his. Steve McQueen has always been one of my favorite TV cowboy and movie action heroes, and it was discomfiting to see him trudge through this role knowing that his end was near from the ravages of mesothelioma.A better film would have had a young McQueen portray the former Army chief of scouts who left home at fourteen to escape an abusive father, live with the Apaches, and later track Geronimo to his eventual capture. As a Pinkerton agent, Horn grew dissatisfied with the legal bureaucracy and became a 'stock detective' capturing rustlers, only to become disillusioned by the corruption of the legal system. As his own man, Tom Horn became judge, jury and executioner, crossing the line from soldier to assassin, placing a rock under his dispatched victims as a personal signature.The events leading to the eventual incarceration and execution of Horn are depicted accurately enough, though I don't know why it was necessary to change the names of the characters. The young boy Jimmy Nolt is a stand-in for William Nickles, the murdered son of a Wyoming sheep rancher. Fans of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" will probably recognize the name of lawman Joe Lafors; it was Lafors who tricked Horn into confessing to the murder of Nickles.Sad as it is to see McQueen go through the motions, I had the sense that he was giving it his all in one of his final pictures. The look on his face as he prepares his character for the gallows seems to presage his own passing in a few short months and you have to wonder how much of that weighed on his mind during the filming of that scene. Personally, I prefer to go with my youthful memories of McQueen as one of my all time favorite characters, that of bounty hunter Josh Randall.

Steve McQueen delivers a memorable performance filled with character and nuance as the real-life Indian tracker, cavalry scout, and range detective in television director William Wiard's biographical western "Tom Horn," co-starring Linda Evans, Richard Farnsworth, Billy Green Bush, Elisha Cook, Geoffrey Lewis, and Slim Pickens. Superb production values, a solid cast, and splendid scenery stand out in McQueen's second-to-last film when he felt the first effects of the inoperable lung cancer that killed him in 1980. Unfortunately, despite these strengths and the quotable dialogue in the Thomas ("Missouri Breaks") McQuane and Bud ("J.W. Coop") Shrake screenplay, "Tom Horn" qualifies as a dreary, pretentious western that falls apart during its last half hour. The problem is simple. This is one of those tedious end-of-the-frontier yarns where hero bites the dust, and McQueen's protagonist tumbles to the status of a pathetic wretch before he hangs. Neither "Tom Horn" nor "The Hunter," his last two starring efforts, captured McQueen at his height in "The Magnificent Seven," "The Great Escape," "The Getaway," and "Bullitt." Clearly, McQueen must have been reevaluating his career because he doesn't play it cool in either "Tom Horn" or "The Hunter." He draws attention to his short statue; he stood five feet nine and a half inches and refers to himself as a little fellow. Similarly, in "The Hunter," he plays a character who encounters trouble after he climbs behind the wheel of a car! This revisionist philosophy on McQueen's part can even be traced back to his decision to star in the Henrik Ibsen play "An Enemy of the People" where he sports a beard, clutches an umbrella,and plays an environmentalist."Tom Horn" opens with this foreword: "He grew up in the violence of the old West. He became a cowboy, rode shotgun for the stage lines, was an agent for the Pinkertons, and fought with the Rough Riders under Teddy Roosevelt. He made his reputation as a cavalry scout by capturing Geronimo in the bloody Apache wars. In 1901, he drifted into Wyoming Territory." Indeed, aside from their catchy dialogue, McQuane and Shrake's pretentious screenplay confines itself to the twilight years of Horn's career in the great Northwest. McQuane and Shrake based their script on the "Life of Tom Horn, Government Scout and Interpreter, Written by Himself." Sadly, this represents one of those times when sticking to the facts wasn't the best idea.Anyway, "Tom Horn" gets off to a promising start. Our hero rides into a frontier town for a drink in the saloon and tangles with future heavyweight boxing champ 'Gentleman' Jim Corbett. Horn criticizes the dapper pugilist (Steve Oliver of "Angels from Hell") for being a lesser celebrity than Geronimo. Wiard cheats us because he doesn't show the fisticuffs the ensued between Horn and Corbett. Later, cattleman John C. Coble(Oscar winning actor Richard Farnsworth) finds Horn nursing his injuries in a stable and persuades him to recuperate at his ranch. Coble explains the cattlemen's predicament in a deftly photographed scene lensed through the slats of a fence. "Any means that you have to take to eliminate this rustling problem, we're all behind you 100 per cent." Later, at a big Cattlemen's Association picnic at Coble' spread, as the guests dine on lobster, another cattleman summarizes their situation to Horn. "We've got a hell of a range problem here. The damned rustlers have completely wiped out our herd profits. Not to mention what the blizzard and predators have done to our calf problem, people are homesteading our range land and raising sheep on our grass." The bottom line is the Cattlemen's Association wants Horn eradicate the rustlers, but they want no apparent connection between Horn and them. Indeed, Horn takes care of the rustling crisis. He isn't afraid to gun down the rustlers, and he gives no quarter in a gunfight. The scene where Horn interrupts an auction and identifies himself as a 'stock detective' is dramatically satisfying, especially when he backs his horse off the premises, something you rarely see in westerns. The night-time shoot out with the rustlers in the barn is interesting and Horn shows his anger later when he kills Lee Mendenhour (Roy Jenson of "The Ambushers") after Mendenhour shoots his horse. Tom pumps three extra slugs into the dead man. The violence, however, takes a terrible toll on public sentiment,and the cattlemen want to distance themselves from Horn. Somebody then kills an innocent homesteader's son, teenager Jimmy Nolt (Clark Coleman of "Kuffs") and frames Horn for the murder. Later, sneaky U.S. Marshal Joe Belle(Billy Green Bush of "Five Easy Pieces") arranges an interview with Horn while a journalist in an adjacent next room transcribes their conversation."Tom Horn" loses any sense of momentum about 65 minutes into the action when our hero winds up behind bars. Wiard fractures the narrative structure with flashbacks of Horn and schoolmarm Glendolene Kimmel (Linda Evans of "Avalanche Express") and events occur definitely out of place. McQueen and Evans generate no sparks as a romantic couple, and their romance frizzles. Their best scene occurs when they are standing between their horses and Tom's horse nudges him closer to her. Prosecutor Walter Stoll (Geoffrey Lewis of "High Plains Drifter") uses Tom's altered testimony taken down without his knowledge to convict him. In real-life, Horn was railroaded; the likely culprit was the jealous marshal Belle."Tom Horn" suffers from severe editing problems and things bogs down after Horn ends up in jail. Nevertheless, "Tom Horn" boasts some funny low-key humor, especially during the lobster scene when Horn proclaims, "Be darned, I never eaten a bug that big before," and a couple of tautly handled gunfights. Meanwhile, McQueen looks cool in his broad-brimmed Stetson, and he handles his rifle as if he's put some rounds through it. Wiard stages several interesting zoom outs when Horn fires at his targets. Altogether, "Tom Horn" boasts a lot of authentic atmosphere and the dramatic irony is effective, but the film is too disillusioning to be entertaining.

Many good comments are already posted. I want to point out a few additional facts about the making of the movie that might be interesting to some. I remember reading a feature article about the making of Tom Horn in American Cinematographer or American Film or one of the other trade magazines. One technique that is very different for a major Hollywood film is that the filmmakers decided to use very little makeup on the actors in order to make the film a more realistic portrayal of life at that time. The fact that Linda Evans agreed to be photographed without makeup is a testament both to her natural beauty and her strong commitment to this film. Watch closely and you will spot many scenes where the lighting and makeup are unflattering to the actors, but the effect adds to the feel of this under-appreciated film. The costumes are also accurate for the period -- no belts (remember suspenders?), lots of wool and plenty of earth tones. In order to avoid the unpredictable weather and short summer in the location on the northern plains where the film is set, the movie was filmed in (if memory serves) Arizona. And guess what? Right in the middle of production, it snowed big-time! A quick decision had to be made whether to delay the filming or to go ahead, knowing that the snow would not last long in that climate (making continuity a problem). They decided to go for it and the shooting schedule was changed so that all outdoor snow scenes were shot over the course of a couple of days. This was a mammoth task for the crew and cast to pull off, but they managed to shoot all the outdoor scenes before the snow melted, and only had to use fake snow in a couple of street scenes. Anyway, Tom Horn was one of the first westerns to try and give a more accurate historical portrayal of the old west and that alone sets it apart from most Hollywood westerns.