This isn’t your father’s western!
THE HOMESMAN has no cowboys – just a few indians – and one of the strangest road trips west of the Mississippi (heading east to Iowa).
The film is definitely not for everyone and could easily qualify as an Art House Western.
The setting is the remote Nebraska territory circa 1850 where spinster/frontierswoman Hilary Swank volunteers to transport three insane young women to an Iowa town where the local preacher and his wife (Meryl Streep) have offered to take them in.
However getting these zombie-like women to their destination would have been an almost impossible task for Swank were it not for the low-life drifter she encountered along the way.
He’s Tommy Lee Jones, who Swank saves from being hanged.
With the promise of a $300 payday, Jones joins Swank in this savage transport of tortured human souls.
Can and WILL the God-fearing Swank make a good man out of Jones? And will these two eventually hook up along the frontier trail?
Remains to be seen.
One thing’s for sure though, some of the absurdities along the way are hard to stomach.
As I was sitting there wondering where and how all this would end, I came to a fork in the road where the picture took a decisively different direction and things began to fall into place.
Hilary Swank’s tough, determined portrayal is her best performance since MILLION DOLLAR BABY.
And Tommy Lee Jones as the great plains scoundrel is in rare form. He’s obviously enjoying the procedures here as he also co-wrote, co-produced and directed the movie.
Tying this oddball western together are a number of interesting cameo performances by the likes of John Lithgow, James Spader, William Fichtner, Hailee Steinfeld and the aforementioned Meryl Streep.
The bottom line, if you’re expecting a typical badass western, this isn’t it.
However if you’re willing to take a two hour long walk on the wild side, check out THE HOMESMAN, opening this weekend as a semi-exclusive engagement with a score of B-.
(Reviewed at Glenwood Arts Theatre)
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Sounds like it is more along the lines of The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Not your typical western.
Hmmmm. Rough and tumble old western man stuck on a quest with a God fearing woman. Sounds an awful lot like Two Mules for Sister Sarah, or Rooster Cogburn.
Touche, Guy
I never miss a Western.
Sounds cool.
I like Tommy Lee Jones in most of his roles. Somehow I perceive (and hope) that he’ll be a little different in this one. Less Deputy Gerard and Agent Jay and more like Eastwood’s William Munny.
Or Woodrow Call.
jesus, how could forget that character!? one of my favorite mini-series and a great read as well.
Call was distant, determined, opinionated, morally upright, and if he had a soft white underbelly, he wasn’t about to let anyone see it.
I hope this new character is a lot more flawed, emotional and just a bit on the evil side. never seen jones play ‘evil.’
Best book I ever read as far as entertaining me.
page turner for sure. I was initially ‘scared’ of how long it was, then before I knew it, it was over and I wanted more.
Executioner’s Song maybe? Or there’s always Under Siege….