The Far Side of Jericho

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.

Im guessing the big names in this movie just had nothing better to do? Painful to watch and the budget mustve been in the hundreds of dollars.

OK? Who besides James Gammon and Patrick Bergin are in this film? Who else do you know? The three principles are faces with no names besides those flashing by in the credits. They're definitely not cutie-pies and the roles they bring to the screen are not your typical Western female hero. One, Maxine (Suzanne Andrews), is a macha-hero-type but the other two, Claire (Judith Burnett), an ex-school marm with a drinking problem married to an abusive bum and Bridgett (Lissa Negrin)is an ex-hooker who actually loves her husband, Billie. These three ladies see their husbands hanged and then chased by everyone else in the picture because they are believed to know where the loot is buried. We see them chased by a drunken, incompetent posse, two bounty hunters, a faux preacher and his gang and then, some Native Americans. While this is not a film to keep you on the edge of your seat, it is an evening's worth of entertainment which goes beyond the sterile iconic old Westerns I and all the other kids of my generation grew up on. All in all, it's better than the average oater.

I wish we had checked a review before renting. This movie was awful!! The acting was really bad. The delivery was terrible and sounded like they were just doing a read-through that no one cared about. There was a horrible overuse of cuss words (could you have added anymore?!). There were many poorly written lines that sounded like modern lingo or slang (did they know it was set in the old west?!). The makeup was terrible and everyone looked ill. The killing of the horses was sad and very corny - amazing that those two words are in the same sentence. It had some good scenery, I should have watched it in mute. Don't bother viewing!!

This film essentially begins with three brothers named "Jemmy Thornton" (C. Thomas Howell), Cash Thornton (John Diehl) and "Frank Thornton" (Steve Cormier) robbing a bank and subsequently riding off with the loot--but with a young female hostage being killed in the process. Eventually the brothers are caught and brought back to town and hung. However, since the loot was never recovered, suspicion falls upon their three wives, "Bridget" (Lissa Negrin), "Claire" (Judith Burnett) and "Maxine" (Suzanne Andrews). Naturally, the townsmen want their money back, but the problem is that these three women don't know where it is. So, realizing their dire predicament, the women ride off into the wilderness with several different groups all chasing them in order to get their hands on the money. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that, although the overall plot had promise, the manner in which it was carried out was rather poor-to say the least. The female characters weren't likeable and having the ghosts of the three brothers pop up every now and then completely ruined the film. In short, while I like a good Western as much as the next person, this isn't one that I would recommend and I have rated it accordingly.