a5c7b9f00b After years of suffering under her beating husband, Sarah decides to no longer take any humiliation or battery, and kills him. For that, Marshal Speakes, her father-in-law, sentences her to the gallows. During a failed hold-up on the coach, she escapes, but Jack Cooper manages to snatch away the transported twenty-five hundred dollars from her, which she would have needed to start a new life. So she follows him to get it back. Soon they have to team up against the Marshal, who wants her dead so badly, he doesn&#39;t mind breaking the law. I guess this is supposed to be a feminist Western. While I liked Linda Fiorentino&#39;s performance, I also have to wonder what her husband did to her to justify so many murders, so much mayhem. I guess it just spiraled out of control and she did what she had to do to avoid being executed, but some characters were killed who didn&#39;t really seem to deserve it. Sam Elliot and Craig Sheffer did decent work, and even Bradley Whitford was OK overdoing a brogue. Like so many Westerns, everybody sure seemed to have an awfully lot of ammunition. The cigarettes and some of the weapons seemed a little bit anachronistic, but the time setting was never really explicit, so never mind. I can&#39;t really say see it, but I can&#39;t say avoid it either. It depends.<br/><br/>P.S. I don&#39;t know if this was a deliberate part of the realism of this film, but about the brief topless scene by Jill Scott Momaday. Her breasts are a bit sagging, noticeably real. I&#39;m not putting down Ms. Momaday,I prefer that to the more common huge mounds of silicone. Just thought it was interesting. It&#39;s too bad that Sam Elliot was born about 30 years too late and was not on the scene in the 40s and 50s when westerns began to change to more adult themes. He wasborn to the saddlea Joel McCrea or a Gary Cooper was, Elliott would have been a superstar then.<br/><br/>Not that he&#39;s done too badly nowThe Desperate Trail shows. It&#39;s just that westerns have limited release for a specialized audience now. When we meet Elliott he&#39;s a marshal escorting a handcuffed prisoner for a date with a hangman. His prisoner is Linda Fiorentino and a holdup interrupts the journey.<br/><br/>When all is said and done another passenger Craig Sheffer makes off with several grand in Wells Fargo money and Fiorentino is loose and Elliott in a most embarrassing position. Naturally the marshal rounds up a posse and pursues the outlaws.<br/><br/>But this is a western with modern and adult themes, more modern than was discussed even in those beginning days of adult westerns. Sam and Linda do have a relationship of sorts and Linda is a battered spouse. As the film progresses Elliott is shown not to be the upstanding marshal that he professes to be and what we expect in the usual type of westerns.<br/><br/>If you like action there are more than enough shooting incidents to satisfy your craving. Elliott, Fiorentino, and Sheffer give fine performances in the leads.<br/><br/>A western with some very modern themes.
ibtecmodi Admin replied
347 weeks ago