Tedfoldol
everything you have heard about this movie is true.
Dirtylogy
It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.
Darin
One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.
milest-30909
I am generally not a big Steve Zahn fan because of his comedy acting career where he almost always plays the clueless dummy,; However this series shows he can act as a solid lead in a non comedy role as a versitile actor with skills that are realistic in natural fashion that makes the audience believe in the part he portrays. The caracter that he played fell right into place with Robert Duvall taking over the series as Gus with the same emphisis on the vocal speech as well as the character variances. Val Kilmer was, as always a great character role, but I think he could have been more of the powerfull character than was portrayed. (writers fault) His acting as always was impecable! There is also a GREAT cast of actors to make this mini series a MUST to watch. One bad note is the last part of the three part series shows the series jump forward in time without knowing what happened to the players that were cut with weak explanations as to their demise. There should have been two or three more episodes (and maybe there were) to show the progression of life as it turned into the Lonesome Dove series. Everyone was left wondering how the new born boy was 6-7-8 years old, but the father, and mother only aged slightly; However the part of Kilmer (and others) seemed to have aged 20 years or more?
Hunter_1957
"Comanche Moon" had everything going for it. For starters, Simon Wincer's back, a man who's name is synonymous with high-quality TV westerns. Unfortunately, the problems with "Moon" are something even the most talented director couldn't solve: A poor script based on a lackluster novel.Forget historical accuracies -- as any reader of the novels can tell you, the biggest travesty in "Moon" is that it's not even consistent with information from the original "Lonesome Dove" masterpiece. So many wonderful, rich moments in the miniseries and, to an even greater degree, the book, are completely missing in "Moon." Considering the fact that most viewers of "Moon" are probably coming with at least some sort of "Dove" background, the lack of character-driven and emotional backstory is downright painful. That said, "Moon" is one instance where the adapted version could and should have been altered to make it more suitable for the screen. For example, the novel "Moon" focuses largely on the Comanches themselves. To its credit, the miniseries tries to service the Comanches, but in the end it gives them just enough that the viewer just gets a sense they're missing out on some important part of the story. Similarly, Val Kilmer's Scull loses out here too -- the role should have either been expanded so Kilmer (and Rachel Griffiths, for that matter) actually had something to do, or the roles should have just been reduced to smaller, supporting parts. Instead, Kilmer gets top billing for a character that just leaves you scratching your head after his appearance in the completely bizarre final act. There's strange moments throughout the film that just make no sense to those who haven't read the book (a killer parrot? what?) -- further, there isn't a single scene that shows us that Call and McCrae are anything near the amazing Texas rangers they claim to be. Not a single one of their expeditions in Moon (or "Dead Man's Walk," for that matter) ends successfully, and Call and McCrae just seem to blunder their way through one pointless mission after another.Frankly, Larry McMurtry should never have been given the job of writing the script, and only did so because of the praise surrounding that other cowboy movie, Brokeback Mountain. McMurtry can write good novels (although there's some dissension over the consistency of that statement), but he's never exactly established himself as a scriptwriter. This production would have benefited from not only bringing back director Wincer, but original screenwriter Bill Wittcliff to adapt the novel to screen. Witcliff doesn't exactly have a mountainload of material to his screen writing credit, but no one can deny he did a fantastic job at whittling down the original "Lonesome Dove." With all this said, "Comanche Moon" is almost a brilliant production, aided by a terrific cast that unfortunately just aren't given enough to do. Steve Zahn's portrayal of Gus McCrae -- or rather, his portrayal of Robert Duvall as Gus McCrae -- is dead-on. And while some have criticized Karl Urban as Woodrow Call, saying his performance doesn't imitate the quiet, stoic Woodrow of the original movie, all I can say is: blame McMurtry, because McMurtry is the one who -- both in the "Moon" novel and now the miniseries -- turned Woodrow from socially inept, awkward, but natural leader, into some emotionless character whose lines are just dull and whose character motivations are only clear if you've seen them portrayed far more adequately in the "sequel".Still, it's the cast that sparkles in "Moon," to the degree that I left the miniseries with that same feeling of melancholy I felt watching the original "Lonesome Dove" -- this time because I realized it's probably the last time we'll see these characters appear on screen for a long, long time to come -- and quite honestly, this cast could have done so well in a well-nurtured, full-blown network TV series.All in all, aside from wasted opportunities with the cast, the biggest travesty is that the original Lonesome Dove novel contained so much rich backstory for the characters that would have been fascinating, utterly fascinating, to see translated on screen. Unfortunately, all that has been tossed aside in favor of McMurtry's tedious, inconsistent and ultimately irrelevant, prequel.
beckaleck
Lonesome Dove is my favorite western second only to The Searchers with John Wayne. I watch Lonesome Dove about every 6 months and never get tired of it. I have read all the LD books, although I cannot remember much of Comanche Moon. I too looked forward to this mini-series and decided to tape it on our DVR so we could fast forward through commercials. Unfortunately, I messed up and didn't record the first part, but decided to watch the other parts and try to pick up.There is nobody that can ever compete with Robert Duvall or Tommy Lee Jones, and I was expecting to be disappointed and I was.Although there were so many things that didn't ring true, the most apparent to me was when Nellie died the day before and Gus was out on the range, it switched over to Clara writing him a letter from Nebraska telling him how sorry she was to hear of her death. How in the world could she have known the next day way out in Nebraska? Additionally, it was supposed to be 7 years later after her leaving and her children looked to be about 6-7 years old, maybe a little younger, yet more time went on before they actually moved to Lonesome Dove, and in Lonesome Dove they had been there about 10 years or longer before leaving to Montana. When they stopped at Clara's in Nebraska, which probably took another 6 months on the trail, the girls looked to be about 10-13, since they were playing in the yard like little children. The math just does not add up.I agree that the man who played Gus had a lot of his mannerisms and looked a little like Gus may have looked as a young man.I am also a little confused about one thing. The captive white girl that they brought back - was she the one they captured when they raided Austin? They said she had been captured 25 years ago, but if she was the one captured in Austin, it was only 7 years later when this took place in the movie. Was she captured earlier? I remember seeing a captive girl after they raided the town and don't know if this is the same one. If someone can explain since I missed Part 1. If it had been 25 years, she would probably be over 40 years old when they found her since she looked to be grown lying on the ground. Also, the way they were ravaging her when they captured her, it is hard to believe she would have lived to go on to be married and having Indian children.I have to admit though, nothing is worse than John Voight playing Call in the sequel to Lonesome Dove or the unbelievable marriage of Lorena to Pea Eye in the McMurty sequel to Lonesome Dove, which was never explained either. Also, the way he killed Newt off was I hear from spite for them doing the sequel with John Voight without his approval.If anyone can clear up these discrepancies, I would appreciate.
jo-653
Since we occasionally enjoy a Western we decided to watch the mini-series, "Comanche Moon." By the end of the second episode my husband said, "Aren't there any men of character in this?" I felt the same. Perhaps the script writer(s) and the producer(s) portrayed the Indians and Texas Rangers accurately, but it brought out the worst in men.Ever since the fall in the Garden of Eden when Eve was told her husband would "rule over" her (Genesis 3:16) men have had to urge (in their unredeemed state) to rape women in order to "ruin" them for their own men due to their race, religion, sect, country, etc. We know it is happening now in African nations as well as elsewhere.There was one incident in the last episode where the Ranger, Call (I believe was his name) urged his commanding officer to let the women and children go while they hung the raiders. But this is the same guy who wouldn't marry "the whore" who said she bore his child because he claimed he couldn't be sure if the boy was his or not. She continued to serve Call dinners nightly and he ignored the son everyone in the town recognized as his.Yet isn't this the way it's always been? Prostitutes can be stoned to death and prosecuted by the law, but the men who frequent them are "guiltless." It brought back to our hearts our own situation: When I married Ray over twenty years ago his verbal intensity caused long submerged memories of incest to surface in my mind. Though Ray was terrified of my emotions, because he was committed to me, he chose to work with me in healing. He held me as I cried tears of shame at being "ruined" as the white women were, that I felt "ugly, dirty, bad, and deserving of the abuse." Then he told me truth to the lies: "No, you're clean. You're good and you did not deserve it. You were a victim. And I love you more than ever." Because Ray was a man of integrity we both healed, (he from the abuse his alcoholic father had dished out and the neglect from both parents), and we bonded tighter than many couples ever do. We still can't believe we have been blessed to know all these years of joy through many difficulties together, and we look forward to many more, God willing.What would "Comanche Moon" have been like if a man had stepped up like Ray did? What would the world be like if more men told their wives they weren't "ruined," and wives whose husbands realize they were sexually abused as children aren't "ruined" either?
