I did enjoy watching this film on Amazon Prime's early release because Tom Hanks was excellent. But it's hard to watch how horrible the people were depicted in the post Civil War Texas. You have a lynching. You have greedy capitalists who destroy the buffalo and abuse their workers. You have evil men at every turn down the road. You have a little girl who just wants to go back to her Indian kidnappers because she likes being an Indian. Several times, I felt like the best thing for her would be to grant her wish to return to them instead of subjecting her to the American settlers. The little girl describes how everything is connected in nature in a big circle of life, while Tom Hanks says that Americans just go in a straight line and look ahead. The movie infers that there is no time to appreciate nature for the settlers. One character even says that there is no time for stories. He needs to focus on working the fields.
This is not a Clint Eastwood film like Unforgiven where I found myself rooting for the most evil man in the West to kill Little Bill. The film hints that Tom Hanks' character may not be a great guy, but I never saw proof of this. I just saw someone who did his duty during the war. This is more of a story of how horrid people of Texas treated each other and the native population. It shows the resentment of the townsfolk for the Northern soldiers and the Northern President after the war ended. It was interesting how the army took away the Texans' guns and only allowed them buck shot weapons. It's a story of how the natural resources were abused with an awful scene showing an endless field of skinned buffalos.
Tom Hanks is very believable as an aging man just scraping out a simple living reading the news. I thought the film was shot with a gritty reality in mind. The gun fight scenes did remind me a bit of Unforgiven in the way that it's not like Hollywood depicts when it's real people fighting for their lives. It showed us a dangerous road and an unforgiving terrain. It was worth watching, but it's a very tough message to stomach even if that's the reality of those times.
This is not a Clint Eastwood film like Unforgiven where I found myself rooting for the most evil man in the West to kill Little Bill. The film hints that Tom Hanks' character may not be a great guy, but I never saw proof of this. I just saw someone who did his duty during the war. This is more of a story of how horrid people of Texas treated each other and the native population. It shows the resentment of the townsfolk for the Northern soldiers and the Northern President after the war ended. It was interesting how the army took away the Texans' guns and only allowed them buck shot weapons. It's a story of how the natural resources were abused with an awful scene showing an endless field of skinned buffalos.
Tom Hanks is very believable as an aging man just scraping out a simple living reading the news. I thought the film was shot with a gritty reality in mind. The gun fight scenes did remind me a bit of Unforgiven in the way that it's not like Hollywood depicts when it's real people fighting for their lives. It showed us a dangerous road and an unforgiving terrain. It was worth watching, but it's a very tough message to stomach even if that's the reality of those times.