Rating: R
Genre:
Western
Release Date: 04/01/2005
Sound: DS
Run Time: 90 Minutes
Flags: Violence, Adult Situations, Not For Children, Adult Language, Sexual Situations
Distributor/Studio: Showtime Entertainment
Meeting largely mixed reviews during its first run in 1971, counterculture icon
Peter Fonda's directorial debut was restored and remastered for its 30-year anniversary. The film opens with three drifters greeting the morning by cavorting in a sun-dabbled mountain river.
Harry Collings (
Fonda) catches a fish and gives it to
Arch Harris (
Warren Oates) who grills it over a low fire, while
Dan (
Robert Pratt) -- the youngest of the three -- bathes in the swift moving current. Later, as they head into Del Norte, a small town in the middle of nowhere,
Dan talks breathlessly about going to California while
Collings suddenly decides to return home after a seven-year absence. After
Dan runs afoul of a group of unsavory characters lead by
McVey (
Severn Darden),
Collings vows vengeance for the lad's death and blows off
McVey's feet.
Collings and
Harris bury
Dan and flee from the town riding hundreds of miles to
Collings' homestead. His wife
Hannah (
Verna Bloom) -- now called "
Widow Collings" by the local townsfolk -- is none too pleased to see her wayward husband at her doorstep. Taking his wife's anger in stride, he asks only to be allowed to work as a hired hand. Just as
Hannah and
Collings start to move beyond the years of anger and estrangement, disaster strikes. This film was screened at the
2001 Toronto Film Festival.
~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide