Tom Horn

On a whim I rented Tom Horn, a 1980 western flick starring Steve McQueen, from the local library Saturday past. I had absolutely no expectations going into it. And yet, I came away 90 minutes later somewhat disappointed.

Yeah, it’s authentically western. Mud, cattle, horses, guns, whiskey, hangin’s, and a school marm. No sweat – this cowboy movie takes place in nippy Montana, not the fire-pits of Texas or Mexico. But that’s okay. The movie is, admittedly, gorgeously shot, and an aficionado could get lost in it.

Were it not for the stupid script.

Now, I’m no expert on Tom Horn or Steve McQueen. Take this as one dude’s opinion based on strict popcorn value. But Tom just does so many stupid things – and fails to do some many head-smackin’ obvious things – that in the end I just couldn’t like him. He fails on a believability level because no one in his right mind would act the way he does. I was near close to pulling my hair out in frustration during the last half-hour, when good ole Tom could’ve saved his skin at least three or four times, and the only time he almost pulls it off he fails so gloriously that I’m positive I – cherubic bookworm that I am – could have pulled it off.

Anyway, if I was to synopsize the story in a sentence, it’d be: Old West relic gets a job fighting rustlers and gets double-crossed when he does his job a little too well. That’s about it, and that’s all it has to be to be a classic. Yet it fails. See preceding paragraph.

If you like your movies superficial, though, there’s much to admire. The aforementioned cinematography. The compact, bare-boned running time – 89 minutes – an underappreciated aspect of great movies. And the violence – shockingly graphic for a 30+ year-old flick, though the camera never dwells on gore. Appropriate, I think, for the subject matter, and therefore not gratuitous. Thus it earns its place in the “pro” paragraph of the review.

Now, here come the “cons”. Primarily, the character of Tom Horn. According to some brief background reading I did, he appears to be quite the unsavory character. Morally ambiguous, a mouthy braggart, brave and foolhardy all-in-one. McQueen (or the script, or both) plays him as a sage, introverted communer-with-nature, who gazes wistfully at the Montana mountainline from his jail cell. When you step back and look at this character big-picture-wise, it just doesn’t add up. Frustratingly so. As an actor (and nearing death from cancer, I understand), McQueen brings almost an innocent goofiness to the role that clashes with the brutal violence he’s prone to. Maybe some think it works; I don’t.

Another thing that was off-putting was the proliferation of character actors. Don’t know all their names, but I have seen them in tons of movies before. You could almost make a drinking game every time some Hollywood veteran pops up. Or else you could do a six degrees of Clint Eastwood, for similar effect.

Still, and I say this frequently, a bad X is better than a good Y. In this case, Tom Horn is better than most of the few westerns made after it, leaving out the obvious exceptions. So, there. It has that. Would I see it again? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps a second viewing for alter my perception, but my gut is telling me to let this one rest for a long while.

Grade: C.