The Far Side of Jericho

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.

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.

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.

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!!

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.