Archive for the ‘Westerns’ Category

Part of what has been presented as a late 1980s revival of Westerns (and you can see how long it lasted), this beautiful film was like an empty brain spurs and cracking version of a Joel Schumacher movie, filled with beautiful, beautiful photos, and absolutely no new ideas. The smile stupidly Emilio Estevez is cast as Billy the Kid, who slowly accumulates a gang of friends Brat Pack (Lou Diamond Phillips, Kiefer Sutherland, Dermot Mulroney) and fashions in a group of male models with six guns. The action is confused and the script is trite, but Terence Stamp is curious that the old reprobate who helps the gang get its act together. Followed by an even worse result. - Marshall Fine The year is 1878, Lincoln County. John Tunstall, a ranch in Colombia, hires six rebellious boys as "regulators" to protect his ranch against the ruthless Santa Fe Ring. When Tunstall is killed in an ambush, the Regulators, led by the wild-tempered Billy the Kid (Estevez)…
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Prior to The Wild Bunch, there was the professionals, Richard Brooks ode wonderful friendship, loyalty, and disillusionment. It may not have the stylistic bravado or fatalistic Doom, the legendary Sam Peckinpah film, but Brooks's narrative is simple and consistent and the same information. The difference is Brooks is much more optimistic. Lee Marvin and Burt Lancaster are friends who have slipped into oblivion after fighting together in the Mexican Revolution. Marvin, the republican principle and munitions expert, lost his wife and his heart. Lancaster, the dynamite expert and unprincipled adventurer, keeps losing his pants. They teamed up with Robert Ryan and Woody Strode Wrangler Archer to save the seductive Claudia Cardinale, who has been kidnapped by their old revolutionary Buddie Jack Palance. And 'once again in Mexico bloody go on a mission of mercy "for the Railroad Tycoon Ralph Bellamy, who pay handsomely for the return of his wife. But nothing is what…
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The West has been one endangered species, both inside and outside, for something like 40 years. Welcome to Appaloosa, Ed Harris film of the novel by Robert B. Parker - first, because it exists at all, but more because, as Harris star, director and co-writer (with Robert Knott) was able to bring to the screen with no hint of embarrassment or strain, as if the realization of no -nonsense, thoroughly entertaining westerns were still something Hollywood has done with regularity. Harris plays Virgil Cole, one of those ace gunslinger-lawyers whose names should be adjusted to go even a saloon. Cole and his shotgun wielding partner Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen), accepts the task of enforcing law and order in the city of New Mexico Appaloosa. This essentially means the protection of raptors rancher Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons, looking right at home on the beach), who murdered the previous marshal Swatting city like a fly. Life gets complicated when, about the time Bragg was imprisoned…
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Essential Video Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones star Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call, aging cowboys and former Texas Rangers and who organize a Cattle Drive 2.500 miles for a last great adventure in this excellent 1989 miniseries adaptation of the novel by Larry McMurtry's. The best friends, who steal the herd from a gang of cattle thieves in Mexico, driving their herd from Texas to Montana, battling horse thieves, angry Indian tribes, and renegade half-breed killer named Blue Duck (Frederic Forrest) on a mission of vengeance. The distribution also includes an excellent Robert Urich as a swindler and former Ranger Jake Spoon, Anjelica Huston as McCrae Old Flame Clara Allen, Danny Glover, Ricky Schroder, Diane Lane, Chris Cooper, DB Sweeney, Steve Buscemi, and even a small role Author Larry McMurtry. Australian director Simon Wincer shows a great capacity for balancing sweeping drama and intimacy in the beautiful landscape of the American Southwest, giving a feeling very epic…
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This study enormous depth to the dark Western icon of stands with mixed results. Trying to understand life, (warts and all), his brother cop-criminal-hunter, director Lawrence Kasdan gains points for scope, giving us a rich epic painted in dark colors with gritty settings. But the visual poetry and extensive spoil the anticipation of dramatic unity. Some scenes have as much impact as the film Stalker, you're waiting for someone to knock off. As Earp, Kevin Costner is not afraid to look rumpled and play colorless (as in "The Bodyguard), but it saps the energy of this 3-hour-and movies. The only relief is Dennis Quaid as a droll Doc Holiday, a much more appealing. New faces Linden Ashby and Joanna Going (as an Earp brother and lover, respectively) are solid finds, though the rest of the female cast is barely given anything to be done. BEST is the first half, with Costner, hip while he was in his Silverado days, both…
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