Dead Man's Walk

Some things are best left imagined, no?

The real reason this was made at all and secured such a broad canvas (4 hours) is that we were eager to revisit these people, Gus and Woodrow from Lonesome Dove.

The story is that they join up with a hopeless filibustering expedition to annex Santa Fe, the film mirrors the exhaustion, aimlessness, dashed dreams on no man's land. The tone is darker—there is scalping, torture, lepers. Young Gus and Woodrow are narrowly reduced to caricature, which is bound to disappoint, but they are mostly side-characters on the journey.

But Lonesome didn't just have the endless expanses of sky and prairie, the riding and shooting. Embedded in that was a richer journey of memory and dying, a whole mess of life already folded in and centered on the vision of women. What's more, it was the true article of myth, the eulogy a mid-19th century woman like Clara would seek in a Whitman poem.

Here, we just drag our feet through the desert and the women (the same women) are tacked on in the beginning and end.

I'm a Texan and as such it's hard to take the obvious mistakes made in reference to Texas geography. One minute they're supposedly on the staked plains near the Palo Duro Canyon (in the TX Panhandle) and then suddenly they're showing mountains in Southwest Texas near Big Bend National Park. Then there's the Grizzly Besr incident. At that time there wouldn't have been any more Grizzly's left in Texas where they did once range a very long time ago. With all that said, this is a good movie and enjoyable to watch. I was impressed with how the Comanches were portrayed with some very accurate depictions of Comanche horse prowess. The acting is solid. It was nice to see it was filmed in Texas in areas where I've done a lot of hiking and camping.

The author of the book "Dead Man's Walk" also wrote the screenplay for this film, which is obvious when one sees how closely the film adheres to the book. Although I have read the book in question, it didn't curtail my enjoyment of the movie.

One notices how closely the young actors portraying Gus McRae and Woodrow Call (David Arquette and Johny Lee Miller) resemble older versions of the same characters as actualized by Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones. My guess is that making that resemblance a fact was of paramount importance to the filmmakers, as the primary audience for "Dead Man's Walk" has already seen "Lonesome Dove" and would be disappointed if Arquette's performance didn't recall Duvall's and Miller's work wasn't reminiscent of Jones'.

Although it may have been primarily a marketing decision, the strong resemblance between young and old Gus and Call works for me and, oddly enough, binds the two miniseries together.

May we now see a miniseries based on McMurtry's second prequel, "Comanche Moon"?

Dead Man's Walk is a series based on the book of the same name by Larry McMurtry. I've read the book and found it to be OK, if a little flat. At just over 500 pages Larry doesn't get into characterization like he did in Lonesome Dove. Where we would get entire pages dedicated to back stories of characters, he merely gives us a paragraph here and there.

The series has a good cast except for one glaring short-coming; David Arquette cast as Gus McCrae. To me that would be akin to casting Chris Rock as Jules in a prequel to Pulp Fiction. The story itself is very interesting but what happens in detail is not so much. The entire first hour of the movie is almost pointless. Other than introducing the great Indian warrior's Buffalo Hump and Kicking Wolf, there really isn't anything that is that important, both in the book and in the series. McMurtry really likes killing off people in the Lonesome Dove saga doesn't he? Don't expect much in terms of emotional sine waves, it just isn't going to happen. It's a decent movie but not very memorable.

I've watched this movie about 4 times, and really enjoyed the personifications of these historic characters (albeit apocryphal).

Johnny Lee Miller and David Arquette are very convincing as Gus and Woodrow. The most memorable performance is easily that of Keith Carradine. He portrayed Bigfoot Wallace, a larger than life frontiersman, who actually outlived the firing squad at Saltillo, in a clever, poetic and humorous way. The only downer of the movie, is the same with any and all Larry McMurthy films: they're depressing as hell! Death, tragedy and sufferin'! And as with all of his films, the conquering will of the human spirit shines through. A fine example of a Western film.