The Desperate Trail

Sam Elliot and Linda Fiorentino go toe to toe in this very entertaining TV western. Elliott plays Marshall Bill Speakes, a lawman obsessed with catching Sarah O'Rourke (Fiorentino), his fugitive daughter-in-law. It seems that Sarah killed her husband. Speakes is understandably rather upset and tears up the west pursuing her when she escapes his grasp. Along the way, Sarah allies herself with a dandified highwayman and the story becomes a rather quirky Bonnie and Clyde story. But things aren't always what they seem as Speakes' tactics for catching the pair become increasingly ruthless as Elliott goes against his usual good-guy image. The audience sympathies are fully with the outlaws in this story. Writer-Director Pesce gives the story a relentless pace as the antagonists maneuver around each other. Visually, the film owes a lot to Leone and Peckinpah (right down to the slow motion death scenes) but the plot is so fast-paced and the characters are so interesting, the pyrotechnics never over-shadow the story. If you are a fan of either Elliott or Fiorentino, The Desperate Trail is a must see.

A woman , convict of killing an abusive husband , manages to escape from the marshal Bill Speakes (Sam Elliott) who's escorting to her hanging . After a failed stagecoach robbery Sarah (Lind Fiorentino) and another thief named Jack Cooper (Craig Sheffer) rob the money , the latter managing to snatch away the transported twenty-five hundred dollars from her . So she follows him to get it back . Soon after , she teams up with the con man in a plot to rob a bank to start a new life . While the marshal who wants her dead so wrongly , he even doesn't mind breaking the law , as he enlists a posse and sets after them. Travellers. Partners. Lovers. Robbers. No one escapes from Marshal Bill Speakes.

This The Desperate Trail ¨(1994) contains strong performances augmented by blazing guns , hobbled by weak writing . Nevertheless, it doesn't have much interest at times , neither intensity enough , though Sam Elliott captures his role pretty well . J. P. Pesce's slick direction , he was named Best Independent Director of the Year at the Hamptons International Film Festival for his critically acclaimed film The Desperate Trail (1994) , which he wrote and shoot . Nice acting from Sam Elliot as the merciless avenger Marshal Speakes who's really decided to sentence his contender to the gallows . Star Sam Elliott is a detached figure in Western genre , being one of its main representatives , performing a lot of them in the Eighties and Nineties , as cinema as TV , such as : Cactus , Houston The Legend of Texas , Yellow Rose , The Quick and the Dead , Gettysburg , Hi-Lo County , You Know My Name , Buffalo Girls , Indians, Wild Times , The Shadow Riders , and several others . While Linda Fiorentino is fine as the brave woman and an arrested killer who decides to no longer take any humiliation or battery , as she frees herself . She becomes partner to bandit Jack Cooper well played by Craig Sheffer.

The motion picture was professionally directed by P. J. Pesce , though it has some flaws . P. J. Pesce studied directing under and Brian De Palma and Martin Scorsese from whom he received honors and also studied editing and acting . This filmmaker is an expert on sequels such as he proved in ¨Sniper 3 ¨ and ¨ From dusk till down : the hangman's daughter ¨ and ¨The lost boys : the tribe¨. Equally , he directed a lot of episodes of notorious TV series , such as : ¨Leverage¨ , ¨Fringe¨ , ¨Transporter¨, ¨Under the Dome¨ , ¨Supernatural¨ , ¨American Gothic¨ , ¨Code Black¨, ¨Quantico¨, ¨Blue Bloods¨ , among others. Rating : 6/10 . Acceptable and passable Western . The movie will appeal to Sam Elliott fans.

Sam Elliot plays a hardened Sheriff bent on capturing his daughter in law because she killed his son who had the audacity to beat her. The sheriffs methods at times seem heavy handed, but he is a dedicated lawman who will not shoot her at the first chance. No, he intends to see her hang. One of the most vicious lines in the movie is his while telling her what it's like. He tells her, "You can hear a neck snap, sounds like breaking a carrot." Excellent portrayals all around, even has a few surprises. I do feel that toward the end the woman on the run become a loose cannon, blazing away at any who offend. This might be taken as her rage against men who belittle and abuse women as had her husband, the son of the sheriff who hunts her down at all costs.

I guess this is supposed to be a feminist Western. While I liked Linda Fiorentino's performance, I also have to wonder what her husband did to her to justify so many murders, so much mayhem. I guess it just spiraled out of control and she did what she had to do to avoid being executed, but some characters were killed who didn't really seem to deserve it. Sam Elliot and Craig Sheffer did decent work, and even Bradley Whitford was OK overdoing a brogue. Like so many Westerns, everybody sure seemed to have an awfully lot of ammunition. The cigarettes and some of the weapons seemed a little bit anachronistic, but the time setting was never really explicit, so never mind. I can't really say see it, but I can't say avoid it either. It depends.

P.S. I don't know if this was a deliberate part of the realism of this film, but about the brief topless scene by Jill Scott Momaday. Her breasts are a bit sagging, noticeably real. I'm not putting down Ms. Momaday, as I prefer that to the more common huge mounds of silicone. Just thought it was interesting.

This movie seems to have been written under the shade of Unforgiven - the beating of a woman justifies over a dozen murders. I didn't see it that way. Throughout the movie, my sympathy (unlike that of Mr. English who also reviewed this) was with the marshal (as rough as he was) in catching and hanging the murderer - and her partner.

The movie was very well-done though - and a particularly wonderful and surprising beginning.

Note the wonderful chimed music when things get most exciting.

It's worth seeing. Linda Fiorentino is superb - and Elliott was born to play westerns - and does this wonderfully - with great restraint.