When your hear wagon train probably dozens of images from countless Westerns come to mind. You hear the call, “Circle the wagons! Indian attack!” The legend has been well established. Kelly Reichardt’s quiet rumination of the travels of pioneers tries to break down that legend and present something closer to the real experience.

In 1845, three families pay mountain man Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood, STAR TREK) to guide them along the Oregon Trail through the Cascade Mountains. As the film begins, we quickly realize they are lost. Meek has talked big about his exploits, but it seems like he is driving these people forward with the hope that the way will be found as the go along.

Reichardt tells this true-life tale from the perspective of the women, particularly Emily Tetherow (Michelle Williams, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN). She is not afraid to matter-of-factly tell Mr. Meek that he has gotten them hopelessly loss. He tries to explain to her that women are agents of chaos and men destruction. She looks at him like he’s full of it. The other women include the pregnant Glory White (Shirley Henderson, HARRY POTTER) and the skittish and superstitious Millie Gately (Zoe Kazan, ME AND ORSON WELLES).

The men are good folk, but ill prepared for what they have gotten themselves into. Emily’s husband Solomon (Will Patton, ARMAGEDDON) tries to placate her when she complains about Meek. What other option does he have? He trusted a man that should not have been trusted. Millie’s husband Thomas (Paul Dano, THERE WILL BE BLOOD) is young and eager and naïve. Glory’s husband William (Neal Huff, MICHAEL CLAYTON) fights illness the whole way. Their son Jimmy (Tommy Nelson, THE GOOD SHEPHERD) idolizes Meek as a true man’s man.

This is a film about tone and simply watching people handle a journey. Reihardt often watches at a distance, which reminds us how small these people are compared to the vast wilderness they are traveling through. For the women, they are even more distanced from events. One such powerful moment, they try to listen in has Meek and the men argue about their course. We don’t need to hear the details to know what is being said and the effect of the woman being left out carries a disquieting quality.

At one point they spot an Indian (Rod Rondeaux, 3:10 TO YUMA) watching them. The women are frightened; they must have been reading the legends. The men capture him. Meek wants to shoot him on the spot. Emily has different ideas. Now personality conflict comes into play. But Reichardt doesn’t amp up the melodrama. She stays on course the whole way.

There are no Indian attacks or stampedes in this tale. Those are probably the least likely problems they would have faced. They have to contend with heat, disease, water shortages, broken down wagons, accidents and sheer boredom. These problems don’t make for high drama, but they burrow into us because we see just how difficult the journeys of these pioneers were when the simple becomes complex.

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In all honesty it’s surprising this wasn’t done sooner. Beginning with STAR WARS, the sci-fi genre has been borrowing Western motifs. Jon Favreau’s comic book adaptation puts sci-fi smack dab into a Western. Even the sci-fi has a Western tingle to it. The heart of this film is in the Wild West and most importantly with its characters.

Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig, CASINO ROYALE) wakes up in the Arizona desert without a memory of who he is or how he got there. A strange metal bracket is locked on his wrist. Outlaws stumble upon him and with the violent way he handles them, we know that the black hat he puts on suits him well. He comes to a small town to take care of the wound in his side. Due to a wanted poster and a band of deputies, he discovers he is a man on the run. He is arrested and handed over to the marshal, but he doesn’t get taken very far because aliens attack and lasso citizens, taking them hostage. Turns out, Jake’s mysterious bracelet has the power to blast an alien spaceship out of the sky.

Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford, STAR WARS) is the brutal cattleman of the area. He demands Jake’s help rescue his trouble-making son Percy (Paul Dano, THERE WILL BE BLOOD), but the amnesiac is more concerned with figuring out what happened to him. The mysterious Ella Swenson (Olivia Wilde, TRON: LEGACY) seems to know something about Jake, but she’s not telling. She will only get more mysterious over the course of the story.

Once Jake starts putting pieces of his past together, he joins the posse headed out to save the townfolk from the aliens. The story, which was written by STAR TREK rebooters/FRINGE creators Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, LOST’s Damon Lindelof and IRON MAN scribes Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, does a great job of establishing its characters and putting their stories at the center of the action. Jake wants answers about what happened to him. Retribution comes into play after details are revealed. Dolarhyde wants to save his son, who is wonderfully set-up early on as a blowhard bullying screw-up. Firing off your gun doesn’t always make you a bad man.

The ruthless Dolarhyde, who saw a great deal of death in the Civil War, has a soft spot for children. He takes the young Emmett (Noah Ringer, LAST AIRBENDER) under his wing after the boy’s grandfather Sheriff John Taggart (Keith Carradine, TV’s DEXTER) is taken by the aliens. Nat Colorado (Adam Beach, FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS) is Dolarhyde’s righthand man; an Indian Dolarhyde took in as a child, but treats like a dog. Doc (Sam Rockwell, GREEN MILE) is the bar owner who wishes he wouldn’t have dragged his wife Maria (Ana de la Reguera, NACHO LIBRE) to the West after she is taken. Meacham (Clancy Brown, SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION) is a kind preacher who believes the aliens are demons.

Craig does well as the laconic antihero of the tale. We’re engaged in his story because we are piecing it together with him. Cast against type, Ford bristles as he tells Emmett about the first time he had to kill a man when he was about the boy’s age. It’s like watching Ford channeling John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards from THE SEARCHERS. His hatred of Indians is tested when they need the help of Black Knife (Raoul Trujillo, THE NEW WORLD) and his Chiricahua Apache warriors. His emotional journey is the most layered. Wilde, costumed in a dress and gun belt, has a spacey quality that makes her character intriguing. This is a perfectly cast film.

Unlike the recent CAPTAIN AMERICA where super weapons didn’t really seem to mean much against antiquated weaponry, here, the aliens out gun the humans by far. So it takes numbers and ingenuity to save their kin. Favreau is establishing himself as an action director who is far more interested in human drama than blowing things up. That seems the perfect person to bring this Western to the screen. The best of the genre always focused on characters. The sci-fi twist just gives the characters a bigger obstacle to overcome. Could this revitalize the Western? As fun and badass as this film gets it certainly is gunning for it.

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I’ve been mulling over what to say about Gore Verbinski’s first foray into feature animation. Like it’s main character it has so many dual identities. Its photoreal animation is a truly original, while its script seems cobbled together from dozens of at right angle sources. The film has adult ideas that few American animated films ever have, but it seems lost at what audience it’s really targeting. It’s a Western. It’s a comedy. It’s an existential examination.

A chameleon with no name, who sounds like Johnny Depp doing Don Knotts, is trying to find his muse in a Beckett-esque performance for himself in his terrarium. Then he hits a bump along the road, literally. His tank is thrust out of the back of his owner’s car along a desert highway. A squished mystic armadillo called Roadkill (Alfred Molina, SPIDER-MAN 2) tells him to go out into the desert and that everyone needs to cross the road at some point.

After narrowly escaping a hawk, he runs into Miss Beans (Isla Fisher, THE LOOKOUT), who lives in a frontier town called Dirt, which is undergoing a water crisis. She, like the rest of the town, doesn’t take kindly to strangers, so the chameleon tries to fit in by posing as a notorious gunslinger named Rango. His tales of killing seven men with one bullet draw the attention of the town’s turtle Mayor (Ned Beatty, DELIVERENCE), who makes him sheriff in order to keep Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN) away. Along with Beans and the other denizens of Dirt, he makes it his own mission to discover who is dumping water in the desert.

Depp makes Rango a bit squirrelly, which makes him vastly entertaining. His developing romance with Beans, a lizard that has a problem with freezing up completely at random times, is quirky and sweet. The film is populated with a host of strange characters. One could say too many characters, but they’re so interesting to look at who would you cut?

There’s a Greek chorus of Mariachi Owls. Their accordion player, Senor Flan (George DelHoyo, TV’s DAYS OF OUR LIVES), constantly reminds us that Rango is going to die. Priscilla (Abigail Breslin, LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE), the schoolgirl mouse, develops a liking for Rango much like the little boy in SHANE did for his gunslinger. Rango’s posse is filled with a wild-eyed lizard, one-eared rabbit, a prospector mouse, an Indian chief crow and a bird who wears a Civil War uniform and has an arrow through his eye and out the back of his head. There’s the town thug Bad Bill (Ray Winstone, BEOWULF) and his men and then the blind mole Balthazar (Harry Dean Stanton, TV’s BIG LOVE) and his inbred rodents.

VFX vets Industrial Light & Magic make the transition to a fully animated feature with ease and panache. This film is amazing to look at. The action sequences are epically staged and impeccably paced. The character animation is equal parts subtle and outlandish. The character designs are a thing of inspiration, brought to life through amazing lighting, thanks in part to cinematographer Roger Deakins assisting as a virtual DP. Some celebrity cameos appear in the caricatured style of Sebastian Kruger, which is surreal in photoreal CG.

Now on with the story. Rango’s vision quest at the start and the Western legend riff seem like separate stories and never mesh well. John Logan’s script liberally borrows from Sergio Leone, John Ford and dozens of Westerns, as well as Hunter S. Thompson and a distracting amount from CHINATOWN. The whole idea of an inept actor posing as a Western hero seems too much like THREE AMIGOS anyway.

So why recommend it if the story is a mess. Because there isn’t anything like it. The oddity of the whole adventure is part of its charm. You could easily argue that the whole thing once Rango hits the pavement is a FEARING AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS headtrip. Thus the mix-matched plot threads are just the Id of its main character unfolding in front of us. This idea came from an American animated feature from Nickelodeon Movies. You gotta see it to believe it.

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For a Coen Brothers film, this Western is pretty straight forward. A young girl’s father is murdered. She seeks revenge. Her determination is undaunted. And yet this is a Coen Brothers’ film. The siblings love of language and dark humor color this compelling character study.

Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld, TV’s SUMMER CAMP) was 14 when her father was gunned down by his worker Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN). She goes to settle her father’s affairs, which includes hiring a U.S. marshal to hunt down his killer. She wants to enlist Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges, THE BIG LEBOWSKI), because he is the most ruthless. But Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Matt Damon, THE INFORMANT!) has been tracking Chaney for killing a Texas state senator. Neither of the two men is interested in taking a young girl out to hunt down Chaney, who has taken up with Lucky Ned Pepper (Barry Pepper, THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA) and his gang.

But as I mentioned, Mattie is determined. Just take her dealings with the stable owner Col. Stonebill (Dakin Matthews, THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS), who goes from wanting to dismiss the young girl to paying her $300 and selling her back one of the ponies she just sold to him. We know right from the start that she’s a tough cookie. Without enough money to stay in a hotel, he convinces the undertaker to allow her to stay at the mortuary among three corpses. It don’t mind her none.

So when Cogburn and LaBoeuf make an alliance and set out without her, they should have expected her to follow. She turns out to be a more reliable posse member than Cogburn. He’s a skilled gun fighter, but also a fall down drunk. He doesn’t take kindly to the snooty ideals of the Texas Rangers much either, which makes dealing with the proud LaBoeuf difficult. The humorous interactions between the hard-headed trio are a highlight.

Steinfeld is a great discovery. Along with WINTER’S BONE’s Jennifer Lawrence, it seems this is the year for breakout actresses playing no nonsense young woman. She rattles off the period specific dialogue like it was native to her. She goes toe to toe with Bridges and Damon and makes an impression. This is key because Mattie can’t come off like she is intimidated by these men and Steinfeld never lets that happen. Bridges gives the performance one would expect from him as a drunken Western killer, which is great. Watch his mannerisms as he rides his horse. His back straight as a board. Is this the pose of a cocky man or a drunk afraid he might fall off his horse otherwise? Damon makes LaBoeuf aloof and proper. He is the kind of actor one can rely on to bring subtle humor to a role. There is an element of the character that could have been stupidly silly, but Damon makes it a fitting comeuppance for the snob.

Another thing one can expect from a Coen Brothers’ film is tightly constructed action sequences. A shack out in the middle of nowhere provides for three tense interludes. First the tension comes from not knowing who is inside. The second comes from knowing who is inside. And the third comes from knowing who is coming.

The film is narrated by an old Mattie. Her experience with Cogburn and LaBoeuf was the pivotal moment of her life. Murder left them marred in many ways. She found in these men kindred spirits. The title of course refers to her more than any of them.

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I went into this film knowing only the basics about the title character. Jonah Hex is a severely scarred bounty hunter with some supernatural abilities. His family was murdered. The film didn’t really expand my knowledge and in some ways confused me even more. At 80 some minutes, there were times I thought I was watching a reel of the cut scenes from the JONAH HEX videogame.

The film begins with Hex (Josh Brolin, MILK) voicing a montage of his time fighting for the Confederacy. He explains why war suited him and why that changed. Then the story jarringly cuts to Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich, BURN AFTER READING) burning Hex’s family alive and branding his former soldier as he explains that he’s doing so because Hex betrayed him and murdered his son, who was Hex’s best friend. Then we jarringly cut to what seems like an excerpt from the JONAH HEX motion comic filling us in on how Hex nearly died, gained some powers, has something to do with crows and that Turnbull presumably died in a fire. For all intents and purposes, the first act of the film is simply told to the viewer instead of shown.

The story begins to show us events in a scene where Hex delivers the bodies of men he was assigned to kill. A gunfight ensues and enemies pop up in clock towers and out of coffins like it’s a shooting gallery. It’s also the first of many times Hex rides away with an explosion behind him. He has a thing for dramatic getaways. Turns out, Turnball is not dead. How he survived I can’t say if it was even explained. President Grant (Aidan Quinn, BENNY & JOON) fears that the Confederate general is building a doomsday device originally conceived by Eli Whitney. The Commander in Chief knows Hex will want revenge so he’s the perfect man to hire to save America.

The rest of the film is simply Hex moving from one set piece to the next in search of Turnbull and his weapon. The narrative is so truncated that one rarely knows the connection of one character to the next. Only two other characters emerge — prostitute Lilah (Megan Fox, TRANSFORMERS) and Turnbull’s Irish right hand assassin Burke (Michael Fassbender, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS). While the story tries to develop Lilah as a tough independent woman, she turns simply into a damsel in distress/last minute sidekick. There’s an episode with an obsessive client that ends dramatically, but leads to no ramifications. Fox is not given more than she was given with the robots. Fassbender shows why he’s a hot actor in Hollywood at the moment. He gives the tattooed thug some personality. During a train heist, I liked how he casually whistles a tune as he prepares to blow a ton of dynamite.

As for the other characters, who knows? TV’s Luke Duke, aka actor Tom Wopat, shows up as Confederate colonel Slocum. He’s at some underground fight club where a lizard man fights some guy. If you blink you’ll miss Oscar nominee Michael Shannon (REVOLUTIONARY ROAD) as Doc Cross Williams. Had to look up that character name. AMERICAN BEAUTY’s Wes Bentley plays Adlman Lusk, some guy who has something that Turnbull needs. Funnyman Will Arnett (BLADES OF GLORY) has the all-too-serious role of Lt. Grass, some soldier Pres. Grant talks to in the Oval Office. And don’t forget FRINGE’s Lance Reddick, a kind of African-American Q, who supplies fancy weapons to Hex and the modern audience a reason for forgiving the scared guy for fighting for the Confederates. Oh, and don’t forget the magic Indians who are far better than any Calvary in a crisis.

Because the film doesn’t take a lick of time to set up any character in the first act, every scene that follows is void of emotional connection. One of Hex’s powers is to reanimate the dead and speak with them. He has a heart to heart with Turnbull’s son, but it means nothing because it’s the first time we’ve ever seen Turnbull’s son. If the crux of the whole story is Hex getting revenge for the murder of his wife and son, you got to give us more than one scene where Lilah names Hex’s scars to make us care about their relationship. And a brief flashback two-thirds into the film of Hex with his family is a little too late in the game to create any emotional engagement.

Even on a technical level, the film seems to betray the story. Scenes are cut so abruptly that one loses the sense of time and place within the movie. Visually the film looks good, but too often, Fox is airbrushed so much that one thinks you’ve gone back to the days of Vaseline on the lens. Explosions and supernatural effects need characters behind them, not just galloping away in front of them. The film is so obsessed with its razzle-dazzle that one closing fight scene isn’t enough, so it’s intercut with a fantasy fight scene as well.

I had high hopes for this one. I like Brolin and he’s good in it. I was hoping for an iconic supernatural Western. The elements seem there for that to be the case, but the film doesn’t seem interested in telling that story. Or any story at all.

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After Frank Capra made him a star in the Oscar-winning YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU, Jimmy Stewart got a chance to play something a little different in this Western for director George Marshall. While the film does everything it can to give him equal billing with co-star Marlene Dietrich, he owns this film. No wonder Dietrich’s bad girl falls for Stewart’s sly lawman.

The town of Bottleneck is run by gamblers and thieves. Saloon owner Kent (Brian Donlevy, KISS OF DEATH) uses his dance hall girl Frenchy (Dietrich, THE SCARLET EMPRESS) to cheat men out of their ranches. And she does a good job of cheat men out of their pants. When the sheriff goes missing, the crooked mayor appoints the town drunk Washington Dimsdale (Charles Winninger, 1936’s SHOW BOAT) to be the new sheriff. However, the new appointment gives Dimsdale a purpose, so he calls for the son of a famed lawman to help him clean up the town. That man is Tom Destry Jr. (Stewart). But when he shows up without any guns, he becomes the laughing stock of the community. Kent believes he has a new lawman in his pocket, but Destry is craftier than he appears.

One can feel the hand of the studio over this production. Stewart doesn’t show up until the end of the extensive first act, which belongs to Dietrich, who then fades into the background. She’s given a few songs, which she sings without great success in English, just to give her more screen time. Coming out in 1939, the film suffers the full weight of the Hayes Code, providing a tacked-on “moral” love interest for Destry instead of the steamy and far more interesting romance between he and Frenchy. But all these issues don’t really matter once Destry rides into town.

It’s wonderfully entertaining watching Stewart’s Destry maneuver two steps ahead of the swindlers. The character seems to live by the notion that it’s good to keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Destry knows when to play the patsy, when to stick by the letter of the law and when to come out guns blaring. His patient approach causes hilarious frustration in Sheriff Dimsdale, who just wants to shoot it up with Kent and his men. Most movie fans know Jimmy Stewart from his gentler roles, but here he commands the screen with intelligence and strength. Dietrich is strong as the exotic dance hall girl who can’t resist Destry. Their adversarial relationship just clicks. Sometimes screen chemistry can replace genuine romantic development. But with screen legends like Stewart and Dietrich, it’s not much of a risk.

Destry becomes an iconic character in the end. He’s calm and collected until you hurt his friends. But don’t expect the typical showdown in the street; the filmmakers find a way to twist the macho Western cliché. Marshall does a good job of balancing the film’s humor with true emotion. A good portion of the humor at the start is pitch black. When it comes to the tragic elements, he doesn’t overplay them, which makes them touching. DESTRY RIDES AGAIN has fun with the genre while creating a classic Western hero in the process.

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John Ford, one of the all time greats, was nearing the end of his career when he made this Western, the genre he so defined. In many ways, it’s a refined take on some of the same themes he dealt with in THE SEARCHERS. It also deals with the Western as a dying genre. A black & white film in 1962 was rare. It was clearly a stylistic choice to remind us of where the genre had come from. An apology for racist stereotypes and a sad farewell to a type of man that had lost his relevance in the age of hippies and free love.

Ransom Stoddard (Jimmy Stewart, IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE) is a famed senator who returns to his hometown of Shinbone for a funeral. An old black man named Pompey (Woody Strode, SPARTACUS) is the only other mourner for Tom Doniphon (John Wayne, THE SEACHERS). Ransom’s wife Hallie (Vera Miles, PSYCHO) is very distraught over the death. How well did she know the deceased? The editor of the newspaper wants the story, so Stoddard tells his tale. As a young lawyer, he was brutally attacked by cowboy Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin, THE DIRTY DOZEN), a man who ruled over the town with violence. Doniphon and his man Pompey saved him when he was lying on the road bleeding to death. Stoddard is against violence and sets out to bring law and order and education to the territories. This inspires others to speak out against Valance like newspaperman (and town drunk) Dutton Peabody (Edmond O’Brien, THE LONGEST DAY). But Doniphon laughs at the idea of law and order in the West. Just look at the bumbling marshal Link Appleyard (Andy Devine, IT’S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD).

Ford pits two forces against the savage Valance. Stoddard believes peace comes from education and law. Doniphon believes in brawn. If the other guy thinks you might be a faster draw, you’re safe. But violence begets violence and Ford shows how peaceful men can get hurt when they try to enter the world of violence unprepared. Stoddard and Doniphon not only have different approaches to dealing with Valance, but also women. But how does a proud man deal with his woman begging him to save another man?

Stewart fits fine as the aged Stoddard, but is too old to be playing a young man fresh out of college. A younger actor would have embodied the brash idealism of the character better. However, this is Stewart and he gives a wonderful performance as usual. Wayne was always a screen presence more than an actor. He doesn’t bring the nuance that Stewart brings, but that’s not the character he is playing. In some of the sadder moments, his lumbering manner actually makes him more sympathetic.

In THE SEARCHERS, Ford dealt with the savagery of the men of the West. Liberty Valance is like Wayne’s Ethan Edwards in the earlier film, only more brutal and nowhere nearly as noble. Here, Wayne is a softer man, but a brawler none the less. He’s willing to kill a man over a dropped steak. The West was rough and Wayne’s Tom Doniphon doesn’t know anything other way to live.

Ford goes out of his way to make point about how society has mistreated minorities and women, as well as misrepresented them on film. An offense he was accused of too. The film sets out to set the record straight. The West was wild, Ford is saying. You had to be tough to survive in that world. But he also embraces the transformative nature of education to create peace. The film is an elegy to the savage men that made that possible. Think about the powerful last line. Peace is what everyone wants, but violence is what they remember.

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Clint Eastwood’s Oscar winner took the sheen off the Wild West, at least how the Wild West was depicted on screen. That being said, the film holds to many of the traditions of classic Westerns. Eastwood seems to be balancing between classic Western mythology and the revisionist work he did in the ’70s. Based on David Webb Peoples’ script, the film challenges the noble legends of the Western genre, showing cowboys and outlaws as savage killers. The West was a rough and lawless place. Even the law was rough and lawless. As the aging assassin, Bill Munny, Eastwood shines in the role he seemed destined to play.

Munny was a notorious killer. But he met a woman and settled down, started pig farming. When his wife died, he was left to raise his two children alone. Then one day, the Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett, ROSEWOOD) rides in. The kid has heard all the tales about Munny and wants his help with an assassination job. A couple of cowboys cut up a prostitute and her friends have pooled their money to pay for revenge. Their town sheriff Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman, HOOSIERS) let the cowboys go in exchange for seven ponies to be given to the brothel owner Skinny Dubois (Anthony James, IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT), who paid good money for Delilah (Anna Thomson, BIRD), who cut up won’t earn a cent. Munny isn’t interested at first, but the money seems better than he can fetch for his sick hogs. He recruits his partner Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman, MILLION DOLLAR BABY) to help.

The “whore’s gold” brings assassins from all over to Big Whiskey. Little Bill has no tolerance for guns in his town. When the legendary gunman English Bob (Richard Harris, HARRY POTTER) arrives on the train, Little Bill makes an example of him, not only stealing his pride, but also his eager biographer W.W. Beauchamp (Saul Rubinek, BAADASSSSS!), who is quickly learning that legend and truth are not one and the same. As Munny, The Kid and Ned get closer, we wonder if they can stand against the brutal lawman. Munny has lost his aim and can barely mount his horse. For all his big stories of killing, the Schofield Kid can’t see nearly 500 yards. Ned wonders if they’ll still have the nerve when the killing starts.

These are the issues this thoughtful Western addresses. In one of the great lines in cinema history, Munny sums up murder plain and simple, “It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have.” Munny is like the avenging angels Eastwood played in his youth, but the film is different in tone. Unlike his killer in HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, Munny isn’t a hero; he’s a cold-hearted killer. Yet he’s more complex than that. He has a soft spot for women on account of the way his wife turned his life around, and he doesn’t take pleasure in revenge whether it be for money or for a friend. He’s given up a life of killing, but it has a way of dragging him back in. He’s good at it, but he doesn’t like what that says about him.

Munny’s story is like the story that was never told after all the other classic Westerns. Modernization has set in. Cowboys and killers have begun to settle down. They’re a dying breed. Beauchamp is in awe to be around them, moving from one subject to the next until he meets Bill Munny, a man who has no desire to have his story aggrandized. There is a pain and shame in Munny for the way he is and was; he doesn’t want to be a hero, because he isn’t one, no matter how much others want to make him one.

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There is a free spirit that drives George Roy Hill’s Western masterpiece. With its use of pseudo-silent film looks to the sepia toned opening scenes to the carefree musical choices and the comedic interplay between the anti-heroes, the film makes us smile and laugh more than dozens of straight comedies. But there is also death hanging over everything as well. It relentlessly chases these two outlaws. Their ways are a thing of the past, and all the references to old-time cinematic techniques underline that fact.

Butch Cassidy, played by Paul Newman, is a laid-back lawbreaker who uses his smarts when he has to, but only when he has to. He’d rather be living the easy life. The Sundance Kid, played by Robert Redford, is a cocky killer who seems irritated with all the peons that he has to deal with. His good looks and dangerousness have brought excitement into the life of schoolteacher Etta Place (Katharine Ross, THE GRADUATE). But she probably would be happier with Butch if she had met him first. For their crimes, the Pacific Railroad’s head E.H. Harriman has hired top assassins to hunt them down. Have they reached the end of the road for their thieving ways?

Working from the endlessly witty script by William Goldman, Hill (THE STING) constructs a lean character study that plays a kind of trick on the audience. It entertains us so fully that we don’t necessarily see what its doing underneath. Butch and Sundance try to live their lives to the fullest. They don’t want to really hurt anyone. They steal from the rich and give to themselves. The way they look at it soldiers, policemen and guards all face danger in their jobs just like a bank and train robber, only their profession pays better. Remember what Butch says to the railroad agent Woodcock after he dutifully protects the safe and gets hurt in the process — “Whatever Harriman’s payin’ ya, it ain’t enough.”

Newman and Redford make for a classic screen pair, complimenting and contrasting each other in just the right ways where we believe they’ve been buddies for a long time. The thing they have most in common is their carefree attitudes. They don’t deal with problems until they are slapping them in the face, and they certainly do not dwell on the past. When they arrive in Bolivia, we discover just how much they don’t know about each other.

Ross’s Etta makes both men reflect, but not too long, on the things their lifestyle has made them give up. She tells them she’ll go with them and will do anything for them, but won’t watch them die. She’s in it for the fun too. Newman, the older of the two outlaws, has more regrets, which we see on his face, but never hear out loud. There’s a turning point where they go legit when they have to face everything they’ve been and will be, but again, they never talk about it. There are sometimes facts in our lives, we come to accept, but never want to believe we have or needed to.

From my description, the film sounds somber, but it’s the opposite. While it has a modern sensibility to its sarcastic humor, it captures the adventurous feel of classic Westerns. Once the posse is after them, their adventures lead to one narrow escape after another. They use charm, wits and often dumb luck to get out of their rough predicaments. Like children trying to bargain their way out of punishments, they’ll try anything like even requesting amnesty from their old friend Sheriff Bledsoe (Jeff Corey, TRUE GRIT). Underneath all their camaraderie and jokes is the fact that their lives will end, probably violently. But thinking about that when it’s not necessary is no fun. In the final scene when faced against insurmountable odds, Butch and Sundance are still themselves, playfully bickering and planning what they’ll do after they get out of South America. Death catches up with us all; I guess we’d all like to go out guns blaring.

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Westerns were the most popular genre films during the first part of the 20th century. Gritty thrillers took over the mantel in the ’60s and ’70s, and sci-fi and fantasy are leading the pack today. At the time they were most popular, the Wild West was not distant history yet. The subject of this film was an advisor on early Westerns even. As much as the popularity of the genre has faded with the public, its respect has not faded with filmmakers and true film fans. Ever so often, a director, or even a studio, will dust off a Western and give the genre one more try. For all involved with this production, they threw everything at it, and made a humdinger.

Kurt Russell stars as Wyatt Earp, the legendary lawman from Kansas who has moved to Tombstone, Arizona. He’s got himself a wife and says he wants to settle down like a man is supposed to do. He’s looking to make a mint in town with his brothers Virgil (Sam Elliott, MASK) and Morgan (Bill Paxton, ALIENS). Also looking to make a killing in Tombstone is notorious gunman and gambler Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer, THE DOORS), an old friend of Wyatt. However, the Earps’ quiet retirement from law is challenged by the unruly gang of cowboys, led by Curly Bill Brocius (Powers Boothe, FRAILTY). Wyatt is determined to stay out of problems with the cowboys, but as Virgil says, Tombstone has made them rich, so don’t they owe it something back?

The all-star cast has only grown more impressive over time. In smaller roles, Oscar nominees and winners such as Thomas Haden Church, Billy Bob Thornton, and Charlton Heston show up. The list of other well-known actors includes: THE TERMINATOR’S Michael Biehn as the quick draw cowboy Johnny Ringo; 90210’s Jason Priestley as the cowboy tagalong Billy Breckinridge; THE CLOSER’s Jon Tenney as the corrupt county sheriff John Behan; GETTYSBURG’s Stephen Lang as notorious gunman Ike Clanton; HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER star Michael Rooker as uncertain cowboy Sherman McMasters; TITANIC’s Billy Zane as flamboyant actor Mr. Fabian; SEX AND THE CITY’s John Corbett as loud-mouthed outlaw Barnes; LOST’s Terry O’Quinn as desperate mayor John Clum; and even Frank Stallone.

In one of his best performances (outside of the moments when he goes into Rambo mode), Russell makes Wyatt Earp a simple man, but not in the idiotic sense. He doesn’t reflect on life, and lives by simple motivations. He has decided to make some money and start a family and that’s what he’s going to do. He’s referred to as an oak. It’s this quality that makes Doc Holliday so fond of Earp. He knows exactly where he stands with the former lawman. Wyatt says he likes Doc because he makes life fun. That carefree streak in Wyatt is what makes him restless. He loves adventure. Wyatt doesn’t see what he might be missing in settling down, it’s just what he’s supposed to do. But adventure sways him. The first hint of that comes when he first sees the pretty actress Josephine Marcus (Dana Delany, TV’s CHINA BEACH). But this oak can’t see the forest for the trees. He’s made up is mind and he’s going to stick to it.

This isn’t the first time Wyatt Earp’s story has been told on film. Henry Fonda played him best in 1946’s MY DARLING CLEMENTINE. Burt Lancaster took on the role in 1957 for GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL. In both of those films, like this one, Doc Holliday plays a crucial role. In GUNFIGHT, Holliday overshadows Earp through a standout performance by Kirk Douglas. The same almost happens in TOMBSTONE as Kilmer gives his career best in an unforgettably charming performance. Kilmer’s sarcastic and smooth killer is the only person who gives the arrogant Johnny Ringo pause. Russell’s Earp and Kilmer’s Holliday work as friends, making each other a better version of themselves. Holliday makes Earp question his beliefs and desires, while Earp makes Holliday have something to believe in.

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