Edward Zwick, one-time director of Glory, has here reassumed some epic aspirations, or epic postures and gestures at any rate, in the matter of an all-male family of four on a Montana horse ranch reminiscent of Bonanza's Ponderosa (Eng. trans., ponderous; labored; lumpish). The unspooling storyline, however, never generates the kind or amount of incident to live up to the epic aspirations, much less to the relentlessly billowing musical score of James Horner. Mostly it doles out a monotonous lump-in-the-throat diet of mushily photographed homecomings and departures and trips up to the family burial plot. There are certainly some good things along the way, especially early: Anthony Hopkins's flinch at a kiss on the cheek from his daughter-in-law-to-be (definitely not his demi-Long John Silver or quasi-Quasimodo contortions following his stroke); the sure-fire heart-tug of three brothers going off to war; and a harrowing night-time battle charge that fleetingly recaptures Glory. However, when one of the brothers (Brad Pitt), with strong Indian affinities extending to the well-brushed tips of his fountain of hair, cuts out the heart of his fallen brother and begins to collect scalps from the culpable Germans, we are compelled to remember that the movie is based on a novella by Jim Harrison (novella, not epic, not saga). And the ensuing images of that brother's grief and torment and despair and self-recrimination and exile and martyrdom (mere images, without much dramatization) mark an irreversible cross-over from the conventionally sentimental to the overreachingly ridiculous. Julia Ormond, Aidan Quinn. (1994) — Duncan Shepherd
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