Crossfire Trail

Crossfire Trail

It might be time to give up in defeat. The Western is dead on movie screens. There was a time when dozens of Westerns came out every year, a time when every major actor had to have his turn at the genre. The Western was in many ways America's quintessential genre - no one else had them. It was our history, our West, our legends. For whatever reason, people stopped caring and Westerns stopped making money. Oh, there have been attempts over the years to get the genre moving again, but I can count the attempts on my two hands. In the last decade, I think only 3:10 to Yuma really did much business, though that is probably only because it starred Russell Crowe and a post-Batman Christian Bale.

Here's the strange thing. I do think there is still an audience for Westerns out there, despite what the studios think. And the network TNT apparently agreed as they pumped some real cash into making a series of highly acclaimed and well-received Westerns with Tom Selleck, Monte Walsh, Last Stand at Sabre River, and Crossfire Trail, which was my mom's favorite of the bunch. And I'll be honest - that is why I am reviewing Crossfire Trail first!

Based on a book by Louis L'amour, Crossfire Trail is the story of Rafe Covington (Tom Selleck) who promises a dying friend, Charles Rodney, that he will watch over his ranch and his wife back in Wyoming. As soon as he arrives at the ranch, it becomes clear that something hinky is going on. The ranch is abandoned, and everyone in town believes that Charles Rodney had died over a year earlier in a Sioux ambush. Seeing as how Charles died in Rafe's arms, on a boat off the coast of San Francisco, this all sounds mighty suspicious. After this intriguing initial setup, we then move over to a well-worn Western plot about the innocent widow (Virginia Madsen, Sideways), the ruthless gunslinger (Brad Johnson, Always) and the evil businessman (Mark Harmon, NCIS) who wants his hands on the valuable ranch.

Crossfire Trail proves that in capable hands - in this case, director Simon Wincer (Lonesome Dove) and star Selleck - even an oft-told story can still be entertaining when well executed. But sometimes it just gets to be a bit too much. Madsen is terrific as the widow Anne, but her budding romance with Rafe is not believable and only exists because that is what the plot demands. And the villains are just too cliche and one-sided, which is an special pity for Mark Harmon, a gifted actor who just can't save how his character is written. There are a few other minor complaints I have, including some cheesy moments involving other townspeople that just don't ring true - mostly characters again behaving not as they should, but in the way the plot demands. I also have to throw a special complaint to the makeup department because they saddled Wilford Brimley (Cocoon) with a huge wig that turns him into a rifle-firing combination of David Crosby and Santa Claus.

But that is getting the bad out of the way. There is a lot of good in the film. While the villains don't quite work, but Rafe's trio of allies, played by Brimley, Christian Kane (Leverage), and David O'Hara (Braveheart), are an entertaining bunch. And director Wincer has a good eye for the West and Crossfire Trail feels real and lived in. And he accomplishes the most important personal thing for me in Westerns - he gives me a good gunfight at the end!

And then there is Selleck. An underrated actor who unfortunately never hit the big time in feature films, Selleck might be one of the few performers who can pull off an old school Western tough guy today. He is very much acting in the mold of John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Randolph Scott, and if he is not as iconic as those actors, he is still rides and shoots with the best of them. He looks like he was born in the saddle. The western genre lifestyle suits him.

There is something else I like about Rafe and the way Selleck plays him. They ignore one of those "cardinal rules" of film school. Film school drives home the lesson that major characters need to have a story arc, they need to learn something or else why would anyone want to watch the movie? I generally agree with that statement, but sometimes these character arcs can hurt a movie when they are forced upon a character who doesn't need change. Do you think Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name had to learn anything or have any sort of wishy-washy personal awakening? Of course not, and if Sergio Leone had included that gibberish, then he would have ruined his amazing westerns (such as The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly). Like the Man with No Name, Rafe Covington doesn't need to learn anything. He knows who he is and what he can do. More importantly, the audience knows who he is and what he can do. And we don't want to see him learn anything. We just want him to go to town and kick some butt.

Overall, Crossfire Fire is an entertaining, old fashioned Western. It breaks no new ground, but then again, it doesn't really want to. And with Selleck leading the way, it is pretty entertaining. And given the film's success on TV, it should make the big studios wonder if there is an audience for Westerns after all.

MVP:

Tom Selleck, clearly. He may not ride as tall as the giants (Wayne, Eastwood, etc.), but he might be the closest and most believable Western actor we have today. And he carries this film through its rough patches and makes me want to watch his other TNT westerns.

I want to give a quick special honorable to Barry Corbin who plays the town's corrupt sheriff - he has the probably the funniest moment in the entire movie, during the final shootout. Granted, this is more of a MVP moment, but I think its worth mentioning.

BEST LINE:

Rock Mullanny: A Frenchman, a German, and an Irishman all walk into a bar. Each of them order a bottle of whiskey with a fly in each one. The Frenchman says, "Mon dieu, I cannot drink this!" So he gives it back. The German picks out the fly and drinks the whiskey anyway. The Irishman grabs the fly by the throat and says, "Spit it out! Spit it out!!"