We watched this at home on DVD from our public library. The DVD is a rental version with no extras at all, just the movie.
I was curious about it for the actors, especially Portman. When she was a young girl she was Marty in "Beautiful Girls", Emmerich was a married man in that movie, cautioning his friend Willie about not trying to romance Marty. Here he plays her husband. My what a few years can do!
It was 1871 in New Mexico, no radio or TV, not even electricity, so they had to entertain themselves at nightfall. The movie opens with Jane Hammond (Portman) telling a story to her young daughter about the upside down tree, where bad people could go in and become good people. The next day she is baking bread when her husband Bill (Emmerich) rides up and falls off his horse. She manages to get him inside and attends to his several wounds, pulling bullets and cauterizing with gun powder when she could reach them. Bill is in bad shape.
The story is not revealed in a smooth narrative style, instead you have to pay attention and clues are revealed very gradually, some in the several flashbacks. Bill is considered an outlaw for having killed 4 men in a gang, but we eventually find out he did so in rescuing Jane from a forced life in prostitution. But now the gang leader John Bishop (McGregor) and his men are out to track down and kill Bill.
Bill and Jane live on a remote plot of land with only one entrance/exit and are sure Bishop will hunt them down. Bishop is the more notorious outlaw, he has a $5000 bounty on his head, dead or alive. With Bill unable to be moved Jane seeks out the help of an old friend, father of her daughter, once thought to be dead, Dan Frost (Edgerton). She pays him, he is still hurt from what he thought was her abandonment of him, but sets out to do what he can to fight off the Bishop gang.
There really isn't anything in particular new here that hasn't been in the Western movies over the years. Edgerton was one of the writers, Portman one of the producers, it is a movie they wanted to make and overall it is an interesting 90 minutes. With his prosthetic dentures, dark wavy hair, and mustache, McGregor is all but unrecognizable. His character reminds me of a young Tom Selleck.
SPOILERS: There's actually a lot going on for a 90-minute movie. The daughter we see at the beginning is Jane's second daughter, with Bill. She thinks her first daughter by Dan was killed by one of Bishop's men. During the big fight at night Dan and Jane, helped by explosives he rigged, managed to kill off all Bishop's men, and when Bishop himself comes in the house he is held at gunpoint until he told that her first daughter, now maybe 12 or 13, is alive at at the brothel. Jane shoots him multiple times, they gather all the bodies, bring them to town to collect the thousands in rewards. She is reunited with her daughter, working as a washerwoman at the brothel. Bill dies so Jane, Dan, and the two girls head west in their covered wagon to begin a new life, headed for the Pacific Ocean shores.
I was curious about it for the actors, especially Portman. When she was a young girl she was Marty in "Beautiful Girls", Emmerich was a married man in that movie, cautioning his friend Willie about not trying to romance Marty. Here he plays her husband. My what a few years can do!
It was 1871 in New Mexico, no radio or TV, not even electricity, so they had to entertain themselves at nightfall. The movie opens with Jane Hammond (Portman) telling a story to her young daughter about the upside down tree, where bad people could go in and become good people. The next day she is baking bread when her husband Bill (Emmerich) rides up and falls off his horse. She manages to get him inside and attends to his several wounds, pulling bullets and cauterizing with gun powder when she could reach them. Bill is in bad shape.
The story is not revealed in a smooth narrative style, instead you have to pay attention and clues are revealed very gradually, some in the several flashbacks. Bill is considered an outlaw for having killed 4 men in a gang, but we eventually find out he did so in rescuing Jane from a forced life in prostitution. But now the gang leader John Bishop (McGregor) and his men are out to track down and kill Bill.
Bill and Jane live on a remote plot of land with only one entrance/exit and are sure Bishop will hunt them down. Bishop is the more notorious outlaw, he has a $5000 bounty on his head, dead or alive. With Bill unable to be moved Jane seeks out the help of an old friend, father of her daughter, once thought to be dead, Dan Frost (Edgerton). She pays him, he is still hurt from what he thought was her abandonment of him, but sets out to do what he can to fight off the Bishop gang.
There really isn't anything in particular new here that hasn't been in the Western movies over the years. Edgerton was one of the writers, Portman one of the producers, it is a movie they wanted to make and overall it is an interesting 90 minutes. With his prosthetic dentures, dark wavy hair, and mustache, McGregor is all but unrecognizable. His character reminds me of a young Tom Selleck.
SPOILERS: There's actually a lot going on for a 90-minute movie. The daughter we see at the beginning is Jane's second daughter, with Bill. She thinks her first daughter by Dan was killed by one of Bishop's men. During the big fight at night Dan and Jane, helped by explosives he rigged, managed to kill off all Bishop's men, and when Bishop himself comes in the house he is held at gunpoint until he told that her first daughter, now maybe 12 or 13, is alive at at the brothel. Jane shoots him multiple times, they gather all the bodies, bring them to town to collect the thousands in rewards. She is reunited with her daughter, working as a washerwoman at the brothel. Bill dies so Jane, Dan, and the two girls head west in their covered wagon to begin a new life, headed for the Pacific Ocean shores.