Maggie Greenwald's non-Western: not an anti-Western, just not quite a Western. The action may be located in a mining town not too distant from those of The Hanging Tree and McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and by and by the historic conflict between cattlemen and sheepherders may loom on the horizon, and a bit of gunplay may be needed to settle the issue, but then again, tears will be seen coursing down the cheeks of the victorious gunman -- more accurately, gunwoman. This gender-bender is also a genre-bender; it escapes recognition on both counts. The story -- "inspired by a real life," though it isn't clear whose -- tells how a 19th-century woman, disgraced in Eastern society, makes her way West, dodges a group of rape-happy soldiers, disguises herself in men's clothing ("It's against the law to dress improper to your sex," the female storekeeper reminds her -- and us), scars her cheek for further camouflage, and passes for a man till the day she dies. Suzy Amis, with her face of slatlike horizontals complemented by a flat-brimmed, flat-crowned hat, is almost acceptable: looking vaguely like the kid brother of Eric Stoltz, lowering her voice like a minor making a liquor purchase, using her hat brim for shade and shield. And the sequence of events, more often non-events, is cautiously plausible. That's about the height of possible enthusiasm, though. In the long run -- and it certainly feels long, if not much like a run -- the story is about as dull as an interesting story can be. Which is to say, the interest in it is inherent in it; it isn't in the telling of it. (1993) — Duncan Shepherd
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