1990 - QUIGLEY DOWN UNDER, a sort of Western film

Tom Selleck was born to play a western hero, unfortunately for him the western film genre died out when Sam Peckinpah killed it off with the The Wild Bunch which came out in 1969. Still this old school western, Quigley Down Under has a few things to recommend it especially for fans of this genre.

Tom Selleck is Quigley a buffalo hunter with a kick ass rifle who has answered a newspaper advertisement for a hunter in the Australian Outback.  Alan Rickman, repeating his Hans Gruber character from Die Hard, is looking for a sharpshooter to kill off Aboriginal Australians who he believes are harming his ranch.  Naturally Quigley being the western hero of this film turns down Rickman.  This leads to a lot of shooting and fighting as Quigley attempts to stop Rickman's killing spree.  Throw in Laura San Giacomo as a woman from Texas who somehow ended up in Australia and you have a reasonably entertaining film.

 

The plusses for this film are the on location photography in Australia, some decent action and good performances from the main cast.  The director Simon Wincer is probably best known for filming the outstanding TV miniseries Lonesome Dove which this film has a lot in common with.  But when you get down to it most westerns are simple good vs evil morality stories and this film is no exception.

 

Quigley Down Under is an enjoyable film in a genre that had ended 20 years earlier.  

The film runs 119 minutes, it was written by John Hill.

2008 - COMMANCHE MOON, a big disappointment from Larry McMurtry

 The prequel to the great television series Lonesome Dove, this followup is just a complete train wreck of a film.

The film appears to cover the early lives of Larry McCurtry's characters, Captain Woodrow F. Call and Captain Augustus "Gus" McCrae and their time as Texas Rangers.  But the script gives them next to nothing to work with. 

 For a western miniseries there is surprising little action and the film spends most of it's running time on the personal lives of the two central characters.  Unfortunately their personal lives are really not very interesting.  The whole miniseries is just a serious waste of time.

 

Larry McMurtry and his writing partner Diana Ossana adapted McMurtry's book and also have producer credits on this show, so I believe they probably have to carry a lot of the blame for it's complete failure.

The running time is a very long 284 minutes.