Lance Henriksen in Gunfighter's Moon - Goodie but Oldie
Mood:
happy
Topic: Movie is a Classic!!!!!
I am still trying to catch up on my DVD watching of Actor Lance Henriksen's movies. I have my favorite movies on DVD that I repeatedly watch; however, I am not ready to disclose them yet except for Gunfighter's Moon. If you are a Lance Henriksen Super Fan you will have a great time watching this movie on DVD. Lance shows his incredible range of talent and has a pretty good supporting cast. Also Lance is the leading man.
Lance is so cool acting in this movie. I am not going to give away the storyline at this time. However, I suggest that you add this one to your collection. It was hard to find this movie on DVD and it was new. More to come!!!!!! By Lafemmenikita07
Other Reviewer Comments
“Gunfighter’s Moon Lance Henriksen
Reviewer: cltsfn13
Lance Henricksen shines in his performance as an outlaw who comes back into town to help his one and only true love. He finds out that he is the father of a 15-year-old girl, and decides to save the day for her and her mother. Kay Lenz who was in the movie house and married to David Cassidy for a while in real life plays the love interest. Excellent movie that tugs at your heart.”
“Gunfightin' Lance! November 6, 2004
Reviewer: R. Collins "vengeance wolf" (the SOUTH)
This is a great film if you happen to be a Lance Henriksen enthusiast. It's the story of Frank Morgan, a legendary gunfighter. Morgan's past catches up with him when his old flame asks for his help, and he meets his daughter for the first time. This is a highly entertaining film.
To see Lance kick major ass as a gunfighter and have the starring role is all you need. As always he has the best dialogue, probably lines Lance came up with himself.”
“I have seen many of Lance's films and this is one of his best!”
"Review Gunfighter’s Moon by Cold Fusion
I've pontificated at length elsewhere (in my review for Purgatory, to be precise) on some of the archetypal nature of the Western genre. In that discussion, I mostly went over the positive aspects of the way in which the Western had become a genre divorced from its historical setting and grew into a language for the expression of universal, larger-than-life archetypes.
Unfortunately, given the whole topsy-turvy nature of this world of ours, positives are not always positives. Archetypes are good when handled properly; when fumbled, we call them "clichés," and they become a sign of lazy, unambitious thinking rather than an insight into the human psyche. _
Part of the problem is, naturally, one of the Western's strengths. (Oh, what a world of irony.) It's a tightly structured genre, perhaps more limited in its elements than any other (at least, any other recognized as a full cinematic genre and given its own shelf at the video store). The historic and geographic setting is both tightly confined, and moreover, they're stylized almost to the point of being unrecognizable for their real-world counterparts. (A lot of people, on visiting Texas, are surprised that it doesn't look like the Texas that John Wayne rode through -- mainly because "Texas" was usually either Southern California or Utah.) The characters are similarly limited, with the focus usually being on gunfighters, forced to make their own law for good or evil in a land without adequate law enforcement; the supporting characters are those who would normally interact with such characters -- namely, bartenders, downtrodden ranchers, and cheap women. In fact, sometimes it seems like the entire typical western town is composed of the saloon, the cathouse, and the barber shop (where the barber doubles as the part-time sheriff or mayor, naturally).
What's the problem here? Well, aside from the fact that there are only so many stories to be told with these people in these locales without becoming hopelessly repetitive, the setting and situations are getting further and further removed with each passing generation of filmmakers. Modern dramas and actioners can be informed by real-world events; science fiction, at least technically, thrives on innovation. But the Western is locked into a finite set of stock elements, about which the current generation of directors and writers learns about solely through the extant cinematic library. It is, in a word, incestuous.
For a moment, I thought I was going to see a Mexican wrestling movie.
That's not to say that good movies can no longer be made with these worked-over elements, but each of the recent successes only proves the point: A Western still has to fully reference the established tropes -- touch all the bases, as it were -- and knowingly play off the "canon." And the audience is expected to be fully aware of the standard elements being referenced. Imagine some poor foreign chap trying to enjoy The Quick and the Dead without realizing the importance of the shootout in the climactic scene of 90% of Westerns, or wondering what all the hoopla was about Unforgiven without knowing how familiar the idea of "the legendary gunfighter who can't retire" is (and how associated Clint Eastwood had been with Westerns throughout his career).
Sooner or later, I have to start discussing Gunfighter's Moon, which is fully as referential to the standard tropes as either of the examples used above, but not nearly as successful. In fact, Gunfighter's Moon also uses "the legendary gunfighter who can't retire" as its mainspring, and it's a no-brainer that this one got the green light thanks to the success of Unforgiven. But that's not the only famous Western that gets "homaged" here. It seems as if writer/director Larry Ferguson, when given the opportunity to make a Western, decided to make all of them.
Lance Henriksen is perfect as Frank Morgan, legendary quickdraw -- now old, skinny, tired, and still tough enough to chew through your arm. Tough enough that, when two young turks from Kansas track him down to a small Mexican town in Colorado just to challenge him, he has no qualms about blowing one away and shooting the other in the leg when his attempts at dissuading them fail. (Regarding that omnipresent urge to find and fight the top gunslinger in these movies: I'm gratified that stupid macho obsessions are not merely a product of a more modern era, and a little disappointed that the terminally stupid and belligerent have no analogous method of removing themselves from the gene pool these days.) Such is life at the top. _
All this scene needs is a red-and-white checkered picnic blanket...
That life, such as it is, is interrupted by a telegram that Morgan's woman Rosa (Yareli Arizmendi) tries to keep concealed from him; but he's far too canny for that. His past has come calling, and he leaves that morning on his horse, with the dog that isn't his but follows him everywhere anyway (don't all gunfighters have one of those?) tagging along.
Now, this next complaint may seem over-finicky, but it's more important than it looks at first blush. Or rather, than it sounds at first blush, because the nit I'm picking at here is the music. Our opening theme was done entirely with keyboards -- passable, until we got to the digital version of "muted guitar," which had "CASIO" stamped all over it. But here, as Morgan takes a five-day montage to Red Pine, Wyoming, we're treated to overly-valiant, fanfarish bombast, more appropriate for the Cartwrights on the ride than for our over-the-hill outlaw. Had I known that this was going to be a three-minute montage, I would've turned down the sound on the TV and thrown a Ry Cooder soundtrack CD on the stereo.
Eventually he arrives at what's supposed to be Wyoming, although it looks suspiciously like the environs of Vancouver. (Hmm. The Colorado village is shown as a dusty, arid place, whereas Wyoming is moist and verdant. I wonder if Ferguson had ever visited either locale.) He's immediately recognized by one of the town's old-timers (must've had the trading card), and reported to the sheriff. Unfortunately, the sheriff isn't really the sheriff, as the real sheriff was killed in a botched bank robbery the week before; the temporary sheriff is storekeeper Jordan Yarnell (David McIlwraith), in charge of keeping Morris (Dave Ward), their single prisoner from the robbery, in jail until his hanging next week. Yarnell's not happy to have the wildcard Morgan in town, especially because he has no idea why Morgan's there, unless it's to spring Morris.
"Hey babe, can I homestead your frontier?"
It doesn't take us nearly so long to figure things out, though, since Morgan's very obviously got some history with Yarnell's wife Linda (Kay Lenz), and takes a keen interest in the Yarnells' seventeen-year-old daughter Kristen (Nikki Deloach). So it doesn't come as a surprise when Linda visits Morgna privately and reveals that yes, Kristen is actually his daughter, and no, neither Jordan nor Kristen know; Linda has told them that her husband died a decorated hero in the Civil War, rather than raise Kristen knowing her father was a notorious outlaw. It's Linda who called Morgan here, because Morris' cousin Walt Shannon (Brent Stait) is on his way to town to free his kin, and there's no way that a storekeeper with a badge can take on a professional goon like Shannon. How she expected to get Morgan's help while keeping her dark little secret from Jordan and Kristen remains a mystery.
There are admittedly many nifty ideas in here, but they're spaced out from each other so neatly that it seems like several different versions of the movies. For ten minutes, after Morgan takes compassion on a downtrodden Mexican servant in the saloon (James Victor), there's much bandying of the idea that "a man on his knees is only half a man." I kept expecting them to grow what they planted there, and have Morgan either end up in contrition in a church or shot to his knees by an opponent; but apparently Ferguson got bored with that particular subtext after hammering on it for ten minutes, as it's never referenced again. Even more maddening, the story we're promised in the opening scene -- that of a gunfighter trying to run from his own reputation and get out of the "business" -- isn't the story we're told; once Morgan gets that telegram, he's gunfighter through and through for the rest of the story. He may regret not having lived with Linda and Kristen as husband and father, but that's not the same as trying to step out from beneath the shadow of a reputation that's outgrown him.
Ooh -- SOMEBODY went to film school...
Now, as you've no doubt gathered, one doesn't head into a Western in this day and age and expect originality. But unlike, say, No Escape, which is almost as derivative but manages to blend its borrowings smoothly, Gunfighter's Moon is lumpy in its borrowings. I get the impression that Ferguson watched a different classic Western each night while writing the script, and woke up the next day determined to immortalize the previous night's viewings in his own movie. I'll not list for you all of the many echoes of previous movies; I don't have the expertise to label them all anyway. Suffice it to say that, while the first half leans heavily on themes from Unforgiven, the second takes its cues directly from High Noon, as Yarnell finds that the town is willing to release the bank robber rather than have Shannon and his posse shoot up the town, and only Yarnell's willing to stand firm. Of course, Morgan's in town to help him, but Yarnell doesn't know that -- and anyway, once Morgan gets shot in the back by the brother of the Kansas kid he waxed way back right after the opening credits, it's doubtful whether he'll be able to help anybody.
The worst part of the story's lumpy consistency is the way in which it continually reminds you very clearly of the movies from which it's taking its inspiration, all of which were definitely superior to this one. Maybe the best audience for this one is the unschooled audience, after all -- viewers who won't see it as a Frankensteinian patchwork of favorite scenes from a dozen other movies, and maybe find a way to appreciate it as a discrete work."
Posted by lafemmenikita07
at 11:43 AM PST
Updated: Sunday, December 3, 2006 2:56 AM PST