Selleck and Carradine are members of the cowboy subculture of post-war Wyoming and, boy, do they have fun when they're not working. They have the esprit and solidarity of the U. S. Marine Corps.
Alas, the West is being taken over by the suits, "Eastern money," capitalist entrepreneurs who downsize everything to maximize profits. That's okay except that cowboys go the way of itinerant tinkers. If the beginning is raucous, the end is tragic really. As his way of life is squashed by higher economic powers, he loses his friends one by one and turns into a kind of Willy Loman, talking alone to his horse.
I don't want to repeat any observations from my earlier review of the original "Monte Walsh", with Lee Marvin. The stories, and even the individual scenes, are pretty much the same.
Tom Selleck is okay in the lead role. He's better at some things, like bronc busting, than anybody else and maybe a bit more moral, but otherwise he's just one of the boys, subject to the same physical and spiritual insults, comfortably within Northrop Frye's "low mimetic" mode -- just one of us reg'lar fellers who bleeds after a fist fight and doesn't always come out on top.
Alas, the West is being taken over by the suits, "Eastern money," capitalist entrepreneurs who downsize everything to maximize profits. That's okay except that cowboys go the way of itinerant tinkers. If the beginning is raucous, the end is tragic really. As his way of life is squashed by higher economic powers, he loses his friends one by one and turns into a kind of Willy Loman, talking alone to his horse.
I don't want to repeat any observations from my earlier review of the original "Monte Walsh", with Lee Marvin. The stories, and even the individual scenes, are pretty much the same.
Tom Selleck is okay in the lead role. He's better at some things, like bronc busting, than anybody else and maybe a bit more moral, but otherwise he's just one of the boys, subject to the same physical and spiritual insults, comfortably within Northrop Frye's "low mimetic" mode -- just one of us reg'lar fellers who bleeds after a fist fight and doesn't always come out on top.