blew. big. chunks.

[deleted]

Well, if you're determined to like it no matter what, more power to you. But as for having "no substance," to quote another film character, "I do not think it means what you think it means." (Here's an example of "no substance": "What a contrived objection." [No specifics, nothing more than that.])

To address your responses, as concisely as I can:

1. Not with regard to what motivates the entire plot--the fact that Brosnan is being chased for something. Go read what Hitchcock has to say about this sort of thing in the Truffaut interview. You can't possibly make this point unless you're using some more broad and generic definition of "suspense" that you might find in a general dictionary rather than as skilled directors and screenwriters use it.

2. How is this "contrived"? Because you say so? Address the substance if you're going to respond. Why would Neeson and his men plant themselves in the exact spot where they're guaranteed to be seen, knowing that this was almost certainly Brosnan's fire?

3. I'm not saying the father doesn't have good reason to refuse to sell the horse. Not even the point at all. I'm saying that somebody should've spotted the apparent contradiction between saying, in almost the same breath, "up here, a man without a horse is a dead man" and "why don't you just walk to town [without a horse]?" (my paraphrases). The fact that an explanation of the apparent contradiction can be constructed post facto is not the point; the point is that screenwriters shouldn't make viewers struggle to resolve such a contradiction for no particular reason (or, alternatively, to expect them not to be listening).

4. The reason I don't comment on "90%" of the film (your estimate) is that I don't have time to write ten more pages on the various problems with the script. As I said at the beginning, these were "only a few sample things that any decent scriptwriter would've known not to do." You do know the difference between "samples" and "the whole thing" or "exhaustive deconstruction of every scene," right?

As for Brosnan "acting out of instinct," maybe--but then, that excuse could be used for any irrational action of any character. He was upset, he wasn't thinking straight, he was acting out of instinct, etc. If his instincts were as sharp as we were supposed to believe they were, as the writer had set up in other scenes with Brosnan's intelligence--all under duress, all while running for his life--why did he do something that made so little sense in this scene? For a writer, there should be a point to such a departure. Here, apparently, there is none.

5. "Neither character were outlaws [sic]"? Really? I'm not even sure how to address this, since I think you've completely misread Neeson's character, at least. If Neeson was "good-hearted and well-mannered," how come he'd kill his own co-trackers? And regardless, even if he hadn't done that, the whole motivation for his character is his obsessive need to kill Brosnan. You think that simply taking the wagon, horse, arms and ammunition, and provisions from Huston at gunpoint to give himself an insurmountable advantage in the pursuit, and then releasing her unharmed later on, would've been _more_ bad-hearted and ill-mannered than the things he'd done before in the story?

6. False dichotomy. No, not "only" Cherokees, etc.; notably, some of the northern Great Plains natives did too, often when they were attending some meeting or function involving white people, or when being honored by the government or some other white-man organization. But the natives of the great expanses of the desert West typically did not wear them and especially would not wear them in the desert heat (you can find more typical headgear for Pauite, Shoshone, and Washoe online if you like). So if you're costuming for this film, why would you do something against type, without any explanation for it? Or, again, if you're departing from the typical, shouldn't there be some point to that? To anybody who recognizes the oddity, it comes off as a costumer and/or director who doesn't know the difference. To be more unkind, I guess, it comes off as somebody who thinks one Indian is just the same as another, like the directors who just need "African tribesmen," as if there were no difference between Masai and Yoruba, Xhosa and Kikuyu. Or like the people who think there's no difference between Irish and Scottish (that one, I've had cast at myself more times than I care to remember). It's just one of those details that it takes almost no effort to get right; it takes sending a gofer to ping around a few websites for half an hour, and they'd have their answer. Instead, it's just "I saw an Indian with a stovepipe hat once, and wouldn't it add just so much character and texture to do that with Wes Studi?" Yup. It also would add character to have seven-foot Xhosa with long spears jumping straight up and down like Masai, if you think your audience won't know the difference (or if you yourself, as director/producer/whatever, don't know the difference). This is emblematic--or, as I said, a "sample"--of the kind of inattention to substance that characterizes the whole film.


What really gets under my skin about this film is that it has a great "look," the Western landscapes are gorgeous, and you have all that star power--but it smacks of the kind of project where everybody thought style over substance was just fine.

But of course. ;-)

Hey, different strokes. Maybe I missed it.

As Edward R. Murrow used to address fans who mailed critical remarks to him: "Dear Sir or Madam: You may be right."

I just need to do that more.