The Far Side of Jericho

Between the horrible acting, with apparent symptoms of low-grade voice-immodulation, and an extremely lacking story line, this film goes nowhere pretty quickly.

I have to say that I was surprised that the acting could seem so unnatural. The lines were delivered as if they were read by a monotone second grader off of a hard-to-read cue card. The action was anything but. The musical score was non-existent. The make-up was done by someone trying to imitate Adam Ant. They should have hired Adam Ant instead, as the video for Stand and Deliver at least had intentional humor.

I doubt anyone will read this review before renting, and thus this will merely be preaching to a choir for people visiting this page. Hopefully, someone will read the back of the DVD before renting. I didn't. It contains this gem: "the woman must find the courage to trust, care, and kill for one another". When there are only two sentences, you would think someone could take the time to check the grammar. Maybe the person writing the description was trying to warn us in a stealthy fashion not to rent this.

you'll like this weak western. As a enthusiast for bad cinema, I seek out the bad, really bad and unwatchable film, and this film is just plain bad. Beautiful cinematography and stunning film locations juxtapose stilted acting, trite dialogue and pointless plot devices. Add in ghosts, gratuitous vulgar language, racial and ethnic stereotypes, poor sound recording, anachronisms such as automobile tire tracks, stock sound effects from 1950's cowboy serials and cap it off with a muddled script and you get a honest to god, crappy movie. Even the final music will cause spontaneous laughter. If you like bad movies, this one will satisfy, sort of.

It's been about ten years since The Far Side of Jericho, was released (December 2006) and for me it gets better with each viewing. It must be the best Western movie with the most negative reviews of any Western ever made. However, from the opening line, "Ladies, they're hanging your husbands at noon" until the amazing cowboy song playing over the end credits this darkly humorous tale entertains in unexpected ways for 99 minutes.

After Heaven's Gate (1980) lost over forty million dollars for MGM/UA Hollywood made it politically incorrect to mention the W word. Thus, when actor Ed Harris approached Hollywood with the script for Appaloosa (2008), Hollywood declined, so Harris produced, directed and starred in the movie himself. It was a huge moneymaking hit. When Kevin Costner couldn't interest Hollywood in Dances with Wolves (1990), he put up his own money and produced, directed, and starred in it himself. It was a mega hit. Hollywood would rather remake an old proved winner, like 3:10 to Yuma (1957 and 2007) or True Grit (1969 and 2010) than take a chance on a new Western story.

TFSJ was filmed in New Mexico and would be worth watching just for the beautiful scenery. The three female leads have over 40 acting credits between them, and the male lead Patrick Bergin has over 104 acting credits. It was directed by Tim Hunter who has 81 directorial credits, and features Mark Adler as music editor. He was music editor on Amadeus (1984) The Godfather and over 30 other projects. One of the writers was James Crumley (1939 – 2008) he wrote 9 novels that never became best sellers, but he had a loyal cult following and garnered much critical acclaim.

When the end credits roll the song Jericho by Patrick Bergin plays and it is as close to the real deal as you can get. If you want to know what it was like when a cowboy sat beside a campfire at night alone while making up and singing a song to himself… this is it. Patrick Bergin must have time traveled back to the 1880's and hunkered down beside a campfire with his Desert Muse on, and…

It's no one's fault if they don't get it, if the brilliance of this film escapes them, because our Western heritage is no longer revered in mainstream media; generations of people have been conditioned to believe that Westerns aren't cool. Fortunately, a video of the song Jericho is available on YouTube and DVD's of TFSJ are available online.

The story of three women who see their husbands hang for a robbery. They decide to go find the stolen money (aka "loot") after various characters start to hunt them down, thinking that they are already after said loot. After riding for a while, they figure out that they are in possession of pieces of a map that will lead them to the loot. Oh, and did I mention that along the way they each start to see the ghosts of their recently departed husbands? I won't spoil it from here on, but if you have ever seen more than a couple of westerns then you have probably figured out how it ends by now.

While it started off interesting, the plot eventually began to bog down and get very predictable (except for the ghosts, which were just plain weird). We had TiVo'd it, and my wife actually started fast-forwarding through the non-action scenes (of which there are plenty). Not sure exactly how the last five minutes played out, as we fast-forwarded through them as well.

A very boring, yet strange film.

When three outlaw brothers are hung after a bank robbery, their put upon, over-the-hill wives go hunting for the gang's stashed loot, using their husband's rawhide treasure map. Following them is mean sheriff Patrick Bergin and sleazy preacher/hangman James Gammon.

Sure, this gets high marks for casting three real women in the leading roles instead of the usual dull assemblage of models and twenty-somethings that usually plague these modern feminist westerns, but the ladies are terrible and their unlikable, unsympathetic character's brassy banter is obnoxious, growing quite tiresome quickly. Needless profanity and the "ladies" crude talk about people's balls and stuff are a poor substitute for good dialog!

The decision on the part of the filmmakers to have the women's husbands turn up as ghosts is pretty darn silly and throws out whatever little credibility this has left.

However, the rest of the cast is great. Bergin is good, as is the cameo appearance by C. Thomas Howell, while Gammon is the best thing about the movie and the cinematography, sets, costumes look more like they belong in a top Hollywood production instead of a dreadful B-movie like this.

I say bring the director, producers, and cinematographer. Give them a better screenplay and fire the women. Replace them with some of those twenty-something models I was talking about.