Teddie Blake
The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.
Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin
The movie really just wants to entertain people.
Phillipa
Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.
chaos-rampant
Some things are best left imagined, no?The real reason this was made at all and secured such a broad canvas (4 hours) is that we were eager to revisit these people, Gus and Woodrow from Lonesome Dove.The story is that they join up with a hopeless filibustering expedition to annex Santa Fe, the film mirrors the exhaustion, aimlessness, dashed dreams on no man's land. The tone is darker—there is scalping, torture, lepers. Young Gus and Woodrow are narrowly reduced to caricature, which is bound to disappoint, but they are mostly side-characters on the journey.But Lonesome didn't just have the endless expanses of sky and prairie, the riding and shooting. Embedded in that was a richer journey of memory and dying, a whole mess of life already folded in and centered on the vision of women. What's more, it was the true article of myth, the eulogy a mid-19th century woman like Clara would seek in a Whitman poem.Here, we just drag our feet through the desert and the women (the same women) are tacked on in the beginning and end.
MissyBaby
I got this movie off of Netflix for one reason. I wanted to see Eric Schweig as legendary Buffalo Hump. But, about a minute into the movie, I started loving everything about it. As soon as the movie started off and we saw the old woman saying "beware of the dark woman on the white mule," it grabbed my attention and I knew it would be great. My whole family watched this movie together. My Dad, my Brother, my Mom, my niece and my brothers girlfriend sat there laughing, crying, just enjoying it, the whole way round. I'd have to say my favorite part is at the very end when the English Woman with Leporasy rode through the desert singing Opera and scaring the living daylights out of Eric. Another favorite moment was when Eric scalpped Zeke never slowing down his horse. Eric played the role to perfection. There were some snappy one-liners that my Dad and me still quote to this day. (Like that one about them green pastures!) I was surprised to see Jennifer Garner in the film and I was glad her and David Arquette's character, Gus McCray, got together in the end. I'd have to say my favorite character was Maddie. She hung in there. She reminds me a lot of myself. I loved it and recommend it to anyone and everyone who likes westerns. Even if you don't like westerns I suggest you see this movie. I give it 9 out of 10. (A point is deducted for the fact that Woodrow walked away from Maggie in the end. I hated that.)
Julius Daniels
What a truly wonderful miniseries.I laughed, I cried and I even saw a British Lady riding nude through the desert. It scared the dickens out of the "savages." There was never a dull moment. From the time the series began to the end this band of Texans lost comrades but kept up the fight. How many ways can you kill a Texan? This picture shows you. Seriously; I really great epic to be enjoyed on DVD...all 270 minutes of it in one sitting.
dinky-4
Larry McMurtry seems to be turning "Lonesome Dove" into a cottage industry, but this "prequel" works fairly well on its own terms. It's mounted in good-looking style and has a first-rate whipping scene wherein Jonny Lee Miller, stripped to the waist, is tied to the back of a wagon and given 100 lashes, the first 50 by one man and the second 50 by another. When that first lash hits Miller's bare back, you not only see it and hear it -- you FEEL it!
