Steve McQueen's next to last film was a study of western legend Tom Horn and the last job he took in Wyoming as an enforcer for the big ranchers in 1903.
McQueen's real life Tom Horn is in the same dilemma as the fictional John Bernard Books that John Wayne created for The Shootist. He's outlived his time. Still when prosperous rancher Richard Farnsworth for the Cattleman's Association persuades the members to hire Horn to deal with rustlers in Brokeback Mountain country, Horn takes the job because it's what he does.
That includes dispensing justice from the barrel of a gun with no regard for due process which was slowly taking hold even in such remote and unsettled places that Wyoming had and still has. He can't do things the way The Virginian did them and get away with it. The Cattlemen's Association with the exception of Farnsworth puts plenty of distance between themselves and Horn.
When a 15 year old boy turns up dead, shot with the same kind of rifle Horn uses, on some very flimsy evidence he's arrested. What I found ironic was at the trial apparently judge and lawyers on both sides never heard of the Fifth Amendment and compel Horn's testimony. They didn't offer nor did Horn take the legal provisions against self incrimination.
In the end unlike Books in relatively civilized Carson City choosing the manner of his demise, Horn gets hung probably for a crime he didn't commit, but mostly because he was an anachronism in the 20th Century.
Steve McQueen turns in a good performance as the aging Horn and such fine players as Linda Evans, Billy Green Bush, Slim Pickens, the aforementioned Richard Farnsworth ably support McQueen.
Tom Horn is a fascinating of the man of the frontier who had no place to go and no place to practice his trade, even if that trade was hired gunslinger.
McQueen's real life Tom Horn is in the same dilemma as the fictional John Bernard Books that John Wayne created for The Shootist. He's outlived his time. Still when prosperous rancher Richard Farnsworth for the Cattleman's Association persuades the members to hire Horn to deal with rustlers in Brokeback Mountain country, Horn takes the job because it's what he does.
That includes dispensing justice from the barrel of a gun with no regard for due process which was slowly taking hold even in such remote and unsettled places that Wyoming had and still has. He can't do things the way The Virginian did them and get away with it. The Cattlemen's Association with the exception of Farnsworth puts plenty of distance between themselves and Horn.
When a 15 year old boy turns up dead, shot with the same kind of rifle Horn uses, on some very flimsy evidence he's arrested. What I found ironic was at the trial apparently judge and lawyers on both sides never heard of the Fifth Amendment and compel Horn's testimony. They didn't offer nor did Horn take the legal provisions against self incrimination.
In the end unlike Books in relatively civilized Carson City choosing the manner of his demise, Horn gets hung probably for a crime he didn't commit, but mostly because he was an anachronism in the 20th Century.
Steve McQueen turns in a good performance as the aging Horn and such fine players as Linda Evans, Billy Green Bush, Slim Pickens, the aforementioned Richard Farnsworth ably support McQueen.
Tom Horn is a fascinating of the man of the frontier who had no place to go and no place to practice his trade, even if that trade was hired gunslinger.