An Instant Classic Duvall captures the Western spirit in Broken Trail
Hard to remember the last time I turned to AMC for an actual classic movie. So what a pleasant surprise that when this channel ponies up (so to speak) for its first TV-movie, it ranks among the best I've seen in years.
There is beauty and darkness, sentimentality and toughness, brutality and discreetness in director Walter Hill's masterfully filmed Western Broken Trail (Sunday, June 25, and Monday, June 26, at 8 pm/ET). This smaller-scale Lonesome Dove has a heart as wide-open as the plains its taciturn heroes ride upon.
Robert Duvall, notoriously denied an Emmy for Dove, could remedy that with his quietly compassionate, captivating performance as Print Ritter. Print is a veteran cowboy who enlists his estranged nephew Tom (the solid Thomas Haden Church) on a trek to deliver 500 horses from Oregon to Wyoming. Along the way, they encounter a sinister form of cattle drive: the transport of Chinese slave girls being sold into prostitution. Print's a romantic realist, a crusty softy, and as he and Tom nurture and protect these frightened young souls, we get a glimpse of (as someone toasts) "nobility in the wilderness."
Though this ragtag caravan encounters many perils, what rattles Print most is the opposite sex, especially Nola (Greta Scacchi), an abused widow-turned-prostitute they've rescued.
The movie and its characters take the long view of life. Whenever Print is asked to eulogize a fallen friend, his words resonate: "Birth to death, we travel between the eternities." Broken Trail is one for the ages.
Close to Home
Now we know where Brenda Leigh Johnson (the winning Kyra Sedgwick) gets her knack for not missing a trick on TNT's terrifically entertaining The Closer (Mondays, 9 pm/ET). This week, we meet her visiting mom (Frances Sternhagen), a sly Georgia fox who snoops into Brenda's life — finding telltale hints that her FBI beau is about to move in with her. Meanwhile, Brenda is busy with the case of a juror who drops dead during deliberations. The mystery is nearly as much fun as the juicy characters.
