Comes a Horseman Reviews

An unusual staging of the American West. Alan J. Pakula, master of paranoia (KLUTE, THE PARALLAX VIEW, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN), directed this offbeat film noir western set after WWII with James Caan as a cowhand, Jane Fonda as a ranch owner, and Jason Robards as the evil oil tycoon. The real star of the film is unbilled: a stretch of lush green land in Colorado known as the Wet Mountain Valley. Ace cinematographer Gordon Willis (ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, THE GODFATHER films, MANHATTAN) photographs this location with so much affection and awe that the talk by oil explorers about ripping it up for profit truly moves and horrifies the viewer. Fonda is a rancher fighting to retain her independence from local mogul Robards, who is attempting to carve out an empire in this post-WWII world out west. Fonda and Robards slept together before she was old enough to know better, and she hates him for that and for a host of other reasons. Caan, also independent and newly returned from the service, teams with Fonda when his partner is killed (probably on Robards's mandate). While Fonda and Caan are resisting Robards, Robards is resisting the pleas of an oil company that wants to come in and drill. A throwback to the ranchers of the old days, when such landholders were almost kings, Robards yearns for those times. Fonda wishes Robards would leave her alone so that she could just run her ranch with a bit of time off to fall in love with Caan, who is trying to forget the horrors of war. Farnsworth, as Dodger, Fonda's aging hand, received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.