A boy's Western, not in the sense that it makes its primary appeal to current little boys (who are probably busy re-fighting Darth Vader or gearing up for Alien II), but rather in the sense that it appeals to former little boys who can still remember what appealed to them back then. And because the former little boy who directed it and co-wrote it (with his brother and presumable former playmate) is Lawrence Kasdan, it tinges these childhood memories with an almost parental indulgence, if not with outright mirth. The heroes of this Western are the sort who can confidently shoot a hat off a man's head at the distance of a football field, without worry that the wind factor or the law of gravity will drag the bullet down to squarely between the eyes -- in other words the sort of hero spawned in the Roy Rogers-Gene Autry kiddie wing of the genre, and ultimately developed, with the proper intervention of adolescent cynicism and amorality, or at least of sweat and beard stubble, into the hero of the "spaghetti" type. But the makers of this Western, on the other hand, are hardly so sure of shot. And an unreliable pattern of hits and misses can be traced throughout (cf. the cast, for example, with Scott Glenn and Danny Glover as hits, Kevin Kline and Kevin Costner as misses; Linda Hunt a hit, Rosanna Arquette a miss; and so on and so on). (1985) — Duncan Shepherd
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