drwnutt

Jack Nicholson gives a wonderfully controlled performance in this film. His restraint and control is contrasted to Harvey Keitel's fallen character and to his out-of-control, childish wife (Valerie Perrine). He works in dishonest circumstances in which he enforces the law selectively in a tacit arrangement with crooked businessmen. In so doing he is a part of the exploitation of Mexican workers. When he transfers from L.A. to Texas, his conscience is awakened by his dishonest co-worker and a beautiful, victimized Latina (Elpidia Carillo) and her child.

There is plenty of action and the story moves in response to the characters.

Freddy Fender and Ry Cooder provide memorable and haunting music that just makes the whole film so much more powerful.

The plot of this movie is not original, but the execution of the characters is so clear and convincing that it transcends the story. Annette Benning is so appealing in her role as spinster sister with standards a little too high for the locals. Surprisingly, the two characters I found only good were Robert Duvall, who reprised his cowboy role from "Lonesome Dove", and Michael Gambon, who played a stereotypical town bad guy. The character who really stood out was Kevin Costner. He captured the dual nature of the western gunslinger hero as well or better than Clint Eastwood did in "The Unforgiven". In each case, we get to see the efficient, ruthless killer that resides in the same body as the really nice guy you meet early on. They were always good at killing. Zane Grey wrote about this in his classic westerns and very few westerns have captured this. Even movies like "Shane" and "High Noon" left us with a nice guy for a hero.

Kevin Costner gets the gets the main characters right and makes this a really wonderful western that I enjoy watching again and again. It has what it takes to be one of the great westerns.

Having been a fan of sci-fi since the 1940s, I have watched a lot of films and read a lot of short stories and novels. This film captures the spirit of sci-fi as well as "Forbidden Planet" and "Star Wars". It plays out just the way the stories about alien criminals and lawmen always did. There is scarcely a false step in the whole film and the cast is nearly perfect. Kyle McLachlin has that quirkiness that makes him so believable as the nice alien and Claudia Christian....

The pacing, which I thought was too slow the first time I saw it, is really right. The music was a little jarring the first time around, but that too fit in much better the second time around. The film lays out the classic plot of the alien bad per.. uh, thing, coming to earth and hiding amongst us and being pursued by another alien.

Everyone knows the story but it is so well told in this version, sort of like hearing the same old joke again and laughing because it was told so well.

This film never got the exposure it deserved, but if you get a chance, get a copy of it, sit back and enjoy. It is about as good as sci-fi gets and one of the only DVDs I own.