Grimerlana Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Lee Eisenberg Revisionist westerns were a prominent genre in the '70s, as Hollywood tried to break away from the John Wayne mold. The notable ones were "Little Big Man" and "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" (and for comic relief, there was of course "Blazing Saddles"). Since Jane Fonda was a major figure in the protest movement - and came out in support of the American Indian Movement - it's no surprise that she starred in one of the new kinds of westerns. Alan J. Pakula's "Comes a Horseman" follows a plot similar to "Shane", but in this case a woman is the central focus, and the story takes place in the 1940s.Jason Robards plays a slimy rancher in cahoots with an oilman hoping to buy up all the land. Jane Fonda and James Caan play a pair of ranchers who team up to try and resist the encroachment. The war between the sides leads to some intense scenes.The landscape plays as much a role in the movie as the actors do. Representing the wild country still holding up despite human development, it reflects the efforts of Fonda's and Caan's characters to resist the corporate titans. Another fine performance comes from Richard Farnsworth in an Academy Award-nominated turn as a ranch hand (the movie also features Mark Harmon of "NCIS" in an early role).All in all, it's not a masterpiece, but I recommend it. Pakula also directed "Klute", "The Parallax View", "All the President's Men", "Sophie's Choice" and "The Devil's Own". He was killed in a car accident in 1998.

Robert J. Maxwell This here pitcher is about cowboys, riding the range. They don't talk words too much. Neither the men (James Caan, Richard Farnsworth, and Jason Robards, Jr., as the archvillain trying to take over all the cattle land) nor the woman (Jane Fonda, kind of dusted up, like). Truth be told, Robards don't say much at all. Sometimes he don't even move, jest stands there backlighted, looking kind of like a menace.Fonda owns an old two-story prairie house and a small piece of land where she raises cattle, a sty in the eye of Jason Robards, Jr. The elderly, agreeable Richard Farnsworth is her helpmate. Any experienced viewer, once grasping the relationship between Fonda, Farnsworth, and increasing age, knows at once that he is dead meat, up for sacrifice to keep us on the side of the angels. Down from the mountains comes cowboy Caan, wounded by Robards' men, his partner shot to death. He quietly pitches in to help run the ranch despite Fonda's fierce independence.Together they get the ranch humming again, also their private parts, probably in a cowgirl position. The murderous Robards traps both of them, locks them in the closet of that weathered two-story house, and sets fire to it. Why he doesn't just shoot both of them -- as he's just shot another household guest -- is a mystery. In any case, both Fonda and Caan escape magically from the locked closet, leap out of the window to safety, and are at once attacked by Robards and two of his worst henchman. The heavies manage to wound Caan in the leg but he dispatches two of them -- one shot apiece -- and Fonda robs Robards of a peaceful old age -- one shot. Ninety-five percent of the movie is sluggish and a little dull. The final five percent is finished with in one big jiffy. I like Alan Pakula generally, as actor or director, but this is a torpid script.Best performance is by rickety Richard Farnsworth, who still knows how to handle a horse and whose candor is pithy, very pithy. Next best: Robards, who seems to be posing for a sculptor. Caan sounds as if he's reciting lines from an idiot board and Fonda can't help sounding like a graduate of Vassar. But make up has successfully changed her from the hieratic to a demotic working woman with weathered features.You want to watch a mysterious man ride down out of the mountains and save the day for a farmer whose land is coveted by the local cattle tycoon? Have you seen "Shane"?

tedg Some westerns are carefully designed to emphasize one strong element that makes westerns what they are: the interface of man with the land. Its why we have so many farmers versus ranchers movies, I think. The folks behind this grind this into a potion, grabbing every element that they can. There's the story of course: about loyalty to the land regardless of the sacrifice. Even about the land as woman. We have Jane who understands this with her gait, her face, her body. And Robards who understands less and has a borderline silly plot line to carry that conflates sex with Jane and drilling on the land.She really is fearless, projected more then than now, because at that point she was the prevailing "sex kitten." She is the earth, the land.But much more profound is what Pakula has done with the horsework. The two leads, so far as one can tell, do their own riding. And what riding it is! I doubt if anyone has captured more complex movement of men and animals n terrain, often hilly. There are scenes that today would be done with animated cattle I suppose because they really do control these beasts. Actors! Except that when they do these things, they are doing it full out as selves — there is no barrier in these scenes. We see Jane and James no more acting than the horses are.It has to be one of the most dynamically honest cinematic capturing of human and terrain, surely that I have seen. If you have a chance, See this with "Straight Story." Farnsworth has the type of death in this film that I suppose he would want to be remembered for. Its noble. Its married to the place. Its just how he carried himself in that last movie where he knew he was dying.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

rgad It was Easter weekend and I was typing the final draft in Allan's office as he and Dennis were revising. It was an excellent script and, I thought, very Steinbeckian. When I saw the movie I was very disappointed. The ending you saw was not the ending of the script I typed. The original ending was perfect; for me the ending in the release was a cop out. I heard later through the grapevine that the studio didn't like the original ending and said it had to be changed. Whether this is true or not, I'm not sure, but the ending was, indeed, changed. Had the original script been filmed, it would have been a much better movie.