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In the frustratingly lackadaisical Tom Horn, Steve McQueen delivers a good-natured but rather-sleepy performance as the true-life rifleman in 1903 Wyoming who was first employed by the Stockman’s Association to deter cattle-rustling and then subsequently framed by them for the killing of an unarmed teenager when Horn’s phenomenal success at killing the rustlers gives the Association a black eye in the press. That’s all there is to the story, alas, and even at ninety-seven minutes the film comes off as overlong and underdeveloped, like a gaseous term paper bloated with delusions of grandeur. It took two writers to come up with the horrid screenplay, which is chock-full of poor dialogue, lazy characterizations (which wastes the talents of not just McQueen but Richard Farnsworth and Slim Pickens, as well) and many logic loopholes. It’s never explained why Horn’s actions wouldn’t be applauded by the Association in that they’re producing the exact results intended, why a secondary friendly character doesn’t testify in Horn’s behalf even after he’s told Tom his testimony could help clear him, and, most importantly, why Horn just doesn’t tell the sheriff and later the courtroom judge that he didn’t commit the crime -- it’s as if Horn were riding some kind of pseudo-metaphysical high and couldn’t be bothered with the harsh realities facing him. And not helping matters in the least is the mediocre William Wiard, a longtime tv director whose first feature-length film this is; and as is usual for filmmakers with his kind of background, he’s at a loss as to properly pace the proceedings, concoct an expressive visual style, and adequately place the camera in any given shot. In other words, the material gains practically nothing from being filmed. The only refreshing element is the treatment of the romance between Horn and an attractive blonde schoolteacher: after a couple of early scenes the rest of their screen time is in flashback while Horn is incarcerated, which admittedly gives this a bit of semi-lovely regret. But not many other kind words are warranted with a production as a whole that’s as shaggily shoddy as this. Like the title character, it’s doom-laden to the nth degree.

It makes you want to jerk off to those old "Rawhide" episodes that are better than this clunker.

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originally posted: 05/23/09 07:58:30
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