NipPierce Wow, this is a REALLY bad movie!

Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Scotty Burke It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Lee Eisenberg Revisionist westerns were a prominent genre in the '70s, as Hollywood tried to break away from the John Wayne mold. The notable ones were "Little Big Man" and "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" (and for comic relief, there was of course "Blazing Saddles"). Since Jane Fonda was a major figure in the protest movement - and came out in support of the American Indian Movement - it's no surprise that she starred in one of the new kinds of westerns. Alan J. Pakula's "Comes a Horseman" follows a plot similar to "Shane", but in this case a woman is the central focus, and the story takes place in the 1940s.Jason Robards plays a slimy rancher in cahoots with an oilman hoping to buy up all the land. Jane Fonda and James Caan play a pair of ranchers who team up to try and resist the encroachment. The war between the sides leads to some intense scenes.The landscape plays as much a role in the movie as the actors do. Representing the wild country still holding up despite human development, it reflects the efforts of Fonda's and Caan's characters to resist the corporate titans. Another fine performance comes from Richard Farnsworth in an Academy Award-nominated turn as a ranch hand (the movie also features Mark Harmon of "NCIS" in an early role).All in all, it's not a masterpiece, but I recommend it. Pakula also directed "Klute", "The Parallax View", "All the President's Men", "Sophie's Choice" and "The Devil's Own". He was killed in a car accident in 1998.

Robert J. Maxwell This here pitcher is about cowboys, riding the range. They don't talk words too much. Neither the men (James Caan, Richard Farnsworth, and Jason Robards, Jr., as the archvillain trying to take over all the cattle land) nor the woman (Jane Fonda, kind of dusted up, like). Truth be told, Robards don't say much at all. Sometimes he don't even move, jest stands there backlighted, looking kind of like a menace.Fonda owns an old two-story prairie house and a small piece of land where she raises cattle, a sty in the eye of Jason Robards, Jr. The elderly, agreeable Richard Farnsworth is her helpmate. Any experienced viewer, once grasping the relationship between Fonda, Farnsworth, and increasing age, knows at once that he is dead meat, up for sacrifice to keep us on the side of the angels. Down from the mountains comes cowboy Caan, wounded by Robards' men, his partner shot to death. He quietly pitches in to help run the ranch despite Fonda's fierce independence.Together they get the ranch humming again, also their private parts, probably in a cowgirl position. The murderous Robards traps both of them, locks them in the closet of that weathered two-story house, and sets fire to it. Why he doesn't just shoot both of them -- as he's just shot another household guest -- is a mystery. In any case, both Fonda and Caan escape magically from the locked closet, leap out of the window to safety, and are at once attacked by Robards and two of his worst henchman. The heavies manage to wound Caan in the leg but he dispatches two of them -- one shot apiece -- and Fonda robs Robards of a peaceful old age -- one shot. Ninety-five percent of the movie is sluggish and a little dull. The final five percent is finished with in one big jiffy. I like Alan Pakula generally, as actor or director, but this is a torpid script.Best performance is by rickety Richard Farnsworth, who still knows how to handle a horse and whose candor is pithy, very pithy. Next best: Robards, who seems to be posing for a sculptor. Caan sounds as if he's reciting lines from an idiot board and Fonda can't help sounding like a graduate of Vassar. But make up has successfully changed her from the hieratic to a demotic working woman with weathered features.You want to watch a mysterious man ride down out of the mountains and save the day for a farmer whose land is coveted by the local cattle tycoon? Have you seen "Shane"?

moonspinner55 Director Alan J. Pakula and cinematographer Gordon Willis, masters at capturing urban paranoia, give this post-WWII western a lachrymose solemnity; while both men may have been quite taken with the western clichés that litter Dennis Lynton Clark's screenplay, they keep the mood so sorrowful that the characters never quite emerge. Indeed, Clark's script seems to begin after the central drama has already been played out. Land baron Jason Robards, embittered by the death of his son and holding a decades-long grudge against rancher Jane Fonda, is in unhappy cahoots with oil drillers, and all want Fonda off her land so they can start getting rich. The picture is sleepy-slow and only half-realized, with Pakula's lofty ambitions clashing with Clark's writing, which is occasionally crass. Some good scenes (including Fonda and James Caan dancin' the Texas Star), pretty locales and a decent score from Michael Small can't really make film worthwhile. ** from ****

theowinthrop I recall seeing this film as a first run movie in 1978, when I was on a date if Forest Hills, New York. It starred Jane Fonda and Jason Robards and this was only a year or two after they appeared together in JULIA so I figured it had to be above average. It was.First of all it was set in fairly modern times (the late 1940s), and it updated some of the stereotypes in westerns. This led to a bit of unevenness towards the end (more about that later) but it also made the story more interesting.Robards is the big local ranch owner, but he is not in a good situation. First, he is pining for Fonda - they were married at one time, but she left him. She owns (through inheritance) a small neighboring ranch that Robards' family once owned. Her chief assistant on the ranch is Richard Farnsworth (whose performance in this film finally took that wonderful actor out of stunt work into speaking roles). Farnsworth is a wise old bird, and keeps Fonda together when everything seems to be collapsing about her - due to pressures from others. The second ranch is owned by World War II veteran James Caan. Naturally, much to Robards' chagrin, Fonda and Caan start a romance.But the modernization of this plot (which could be the plot from some old 1930s film with Caan's equivalent being a Civil War veteran), was that Robards is land rich, but money poor. It is the constant problem of ranchers and farmers (and land developers) alike: Yes you can make a fortune in properly run, land - based businesses, but you have to maintain the quality of the property. This means you need cash to upgrade the property, and make sure it is not going down-hill. But (in the case of ranching) one or two or three years of bad returns on the sales of cattle, horses, or crops and you may be unable to keep the money coming in. Such is the situation with Robards, who owes money to the local banker (James Keach). Robards is oddly enough in the position of a small farmer seeking a loan extension (say like the Oakies in THE GRAPES OF WRATH), but he is finding Keach less than sympathetic. The reason is that Keach is working with George Grizzard, a very wealthy oilman. They both realize that Robards' ranch is in jeopardy due to his bank debt, and they might be able to foreclose on it. Similar problems are there for both Fonda and Caan.Up to two thirds of the film this was a very good movie, but the unevenness was (as pointed out by the critics) that economic circumstances should have joined Robards, Fonda, and Caan as a front against Grizzard and Keach. Had they done that the film would have been quite original. The failure to do so made the film's conclusion rather ordinary - although still a good film. The deaths of two of the characters in particular (I won't mention which) were quite striking.