Ten years after his directorial debut, The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada, Tommy Lee Jones returns to the western genre for his second theatrical outing behind the camera. As before, Jones takes a major acting role alongside an impressive cast in this often beautiful, often melancholy film.
Jones plays George Briggs, a vagabond who is rescued from the gallows by a chance encounter with frontierswoman Mary Cuddy (Swank). Despite her initial doubts about the old rascal, Cuddy soon enrols Briggs to help her on her hazardous mission to transport three mentally disturbed women across the dangerous Nebraska territories and into the care of the wife of a Methodist minister. As they encounter numerous perils along the way, the two inevitably draw closer.
Yet, however this may sound, this isn’t a particularly romantic, predictable or actually very cheery film. Although well acted, neither Jones nor Swank’s characters are very likeable and much of the action is punctuated by a number of grim and disturbing scenes.
The accompanying featurettes The Story, Shooting The Film and The Western effectively amount to an hour of intelligent discussion about the film from key members of the cast and crew about the film’s production and ultimately the western genre itself. The final featurette deals with The Homesman’s reception at the Cannes festival where it in fact received a rather muted reception. It isn’t hard to see why.
Overall Verdict: Truly gritty. Although hard to fault, The Homesman is a cold film: easy to admire but difficult to love.
Special Features:
The Story Featurette
Shooting The Film Featutette
The Western Featurette
The Homesman At Cannes Featurette
Reviewer: Chris Hallam