Comes a Horseman (1978)

(On Cable TV, June 2022) Jane Fonda as a single rancher. James Caan as a WW2 veteran helping her out. Jason Robards as a local tycoon aiming to control an entire valley. An oil executive in the area to make an irresistible offer for what’s under the ground. While none of this is uninteresting, you have to keep in mind that Comes a Horseman is a typical revisionist 1970s western. It’s sober, slow, tinted brown-on-beige, obsessed with not doing the same thing as decades’ worth of westerns but, at the same time, not as successful at holding an audience’s attention. Director Alan J. Pakula is only too happy to feature social commentary on sexism, sexual abuse, rapacious oil exploitation and the impact of war even on the American hinterland. Alas, it’s a snore – if you though Heaven’s Gate was too long and slow, you clearly haven’t seen Comes a Horseman yet. There are a few good moments, but not enough of them to matter and by the time you read about the film’s production history to discover that a stuntman died while shooting the film (with the footage preceding the accident easily identifiable in the finished film), it’s enough not to care about the film at all.