Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

gavin6942 Harry (Peter Fonda) returns home to his wife and farm after drifting with his friend Arch (Warren Oates) and has to make a difficult decision regarding his loyalties.Due to the huge financial success of "Easy Rider" (1969), which Fonda co-wrote, produced and starred in, Universal Studios gave him full artistic control over "The Hired Hand", his debut as a director. (Universal also did the same for Dennis Hopper with "The Last Movie" that year.) How interesting that Fonda went or a more conventional western rather than a personal, boundary-pushing film.Upon release, the film received a mixed critical response and was a financial failure. In 1973, the film was shown on NBC-TV in an expanded version, but soon drifted into obscurity. In 2001, a fully restored version was shown at various film festivals, gaining strong critical praise, and it was released by the Sundance Channel on DVD. It is now considered a classic Western of the period.My suspicion is the "classic" status is largely because of the names attached. Both Fonda and Oates are cult figures and the cinematographer went on to be rather important. The film, in and of itself, does not really stand out for me. I suppose the idea of a woman doing what she had to do is a bit more frank than usual, which deserves praise.... but otherwise.

Blue_Jay_Way Peter Fonda's career in westerns was about tearing down everything that his father, Henry Fonda, ever stood for. Where Henry Fonda was a top gun in most westerns, Peter Fonda is more like a sad and thoughtful loser. Where Henry Fonda always had women lusting after him in the westerns, Peter Fonda's movie wife, Verna Bloom, does not want much to do with him. While traditional western women are faithful to their men, Bloom is open about screwing all of the men she hires to help at the ranch, because her husband was away, and she needed sex. This movie throws a lot of darts at the westerns that Henry Fonda made. In many ways, it is an anti-western, and anti-Henry Fonda. As a movie, while the photography is beautiful, the actual story is very lame and boring. Peter Fonda loves to have close-ups of his face. It is like he is in love with himself. There is not much story here. One day Peter Fonda decides to go home to see what happened to his wife after seven years of abandonment. Warren Oates, his best friend, tags along. That is the whole movie. The end of the movie was badly choreographed and features a sub-par shootout that once again contrasts the difference between the great Henry Fonda, and his pathetic stoner son, Peter Fonda. It literally ends with a thud, and everything positive that was building up gets let down. It is truly the anti-Christ of a Henry Fonda Western movie.

Kirpianuscus its beauty is almost spectacular. and result of high science of detail. portrait of West life, it is pure poetry. precise, gracefully, delicate, film of silence and small gestures, using admirable cinematography and reflecting a wise vision of Peter Fonda about a world who, in many films, is represented only by the outside aspects. a film about soul of few people, a land and desire. refined and convincing. powerful and strange because it has the courage and force and science to define in deeper manner the genre. one of rare Westerns who impose the essence of a style of life, importance of its values and the need of happiness. a film about solitude, family and duty. about the ambiguity of relations out of classic definitions. an admirable work. and, out of doubts, a masterpiece.

chaos-rampant I'm surprised at the maturity Peter Fonda the director displays with THE HIRED HAND. It'll be a fruitless search to attempt to find a western resonating with the ambiance and themes of THH in its time. It would take quite a few years for the American western to embrace this new take on the mythos of the old west - far removed from the works of John Ford, Anthony Mann or Howard Hawks.THH relates a small but intimate drama about three men travelling west for California - the gold, the ocean, the cold beer, it's a promised land of sorts for drifters like them. After a deadly incident in a small, rundown village where they bury the younger companion, the other two, Harry (Peter Fonda) and Artch (Warren Oates) decide to turn back and instead of California return to Harry's wife - whom he abandoned six years ago to become a drifter.Upon their return Harris finds a frigid and distant wife, reluctant to have him back. She satisfied her natural sexual frustration over the years by sleeping with the men she hired - and that's exactly how she takes Harry back, a hired hand to do work around the house, until he can earn his way back as her husband.This little vucolic drama unfolds in some neck of the woods, unpretentious and stripped of all fat, laconic as much as it is melancholic. A simple story superbly told, with small nuances and glances and full images that stand in for a barrage of dialogue and the actors hitting all the right notes, underplaying it enough to suck you in the heart of it all.It is only natural then that Vilmos Zsigmond's cinematography matches the tone of the script. Beautiful exterior shots turn the landscape, in turns rugged and comforting, into another character. The only misstep, in my opinion, in the visual aspect of THH is the overuse of montages - Fonda superimposes image upon image as a transitory device which doesn't always work that well. I prefer full, clean images as far as that goes.I can't find any major faults with THH - apart from that it's not what many western fans might be looking for which is of course not an inherent flaw of the film. The third act builds into a gritty and violent revenge subplot that includes a short but terrific shootout whose outcome is suffused with bitter irony. Apart from that however THH doesn't have anything in the way of action, no wild galloping through the prairie, no robbers holding up banks and no cavalries chasing away injuns.As much sombre as it is elegiac, heartfelt and poignant, THH might be little seen but remains one of the best westerns of the 70's. Fans of UNFORGIVEN, OPEN RANGE and the recent THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES will find something to appreciate.