Main Cast: James Caan, Jane Fonda, Jason Robards, Jr., George Grizzard, Richard Farnsworth
Release Year: 1978
Country: US
Run Time: 119 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
Plot
Old man Ewing (Jason Robards) owns a ranch right next to the ranch of Ella (Jane Fonda). This is a source of two problems: Ewing wants to gobble up most of the land around the two ranches and also wants Ella's ranch; secondly, when Ella was too young to know better, she went to bed with the man, which, many years later, she considers to have been a grievous error on her part. A third problem arises when oil companies begin pressuring both of them to allow drilling on their land, and Ewing won't allow it -- on his or anyone else's land. Before long, war-veteran Frank (James Caan) enters Ella's life and helps her fight to save her land and her sanity, with added assistance from Dodger (Richard Farnsworth), an old local who knows the score. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
Review
Comes a Horseman won Richard Farnsworth his first Oscar nomination, but the veteran stunt man-turned-thespian provides only one of the fine performances in this grave, level-headed Alan J. Pakula effort. James Caan's insouciant veteran/cowboy and Jason Robards' winner-takes-all villain are equally solid. Jane Fonda, meanwhile, leverages a severe Electra complex and a lot of dusty cattle rancher costumes into a very different sort of showcase role than the one that earned her an Oscar in Pakula's masterpiece Klute. The popular director keeps the focus on his actors, but screenwriter Dennis Lynton Clark and cinematographer Gordon Willis take great pains to demonstrate both the hardships of the modern rancher and the dusky beauty that continues to draw independent-minded individuals to such a life. This is mostly a quiet film, full of pervasive, unglamorous challenges and occasional but subtle triumphs. It isn't a blockbuster and doesn't try to be, but its measured script is full of well-observed moments and ragged charm. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
Jim Davis - Julie Blocker; Mark Harmon - Billy Joe Meynert; Macon McCalman - Hoverston; Basil Hoffman - George Bascomb; James Kline - Ralph Cole; James Keach - Kroegh; Clifford A. Pellow - Cattle Buyer
Credit
Ronald Caan - Associate Producer, Luster Bayless - Costume Designer, Paul Helmick - First Assistant Director, Alan J. Pakula - Director, Marion Rothman - Editor, Robert Chartoff - Executive Producer, Irwin Winkler - Executive Producer, Michael Small - Composer (Music Score), George Jenkins - Production Designer, Gordon Willis - Cinematographer, Gene Kirkwood - Producer, Dan Paulson - Producer, Arthur Jeph Parker - Set Designer, Chris Newman - Sound/Sound Designer, Billy Burton - Stunts, Donna Garrett - Stunts, Ted White - Stunts, Danny Costa - Stunts, Walter Scott - Stunts, R.L. Tolbert - Stunts, H.P. Evetts - Stunts, James Sheppard - Stunts, Sammy Thurman - Stunts, Walter Scott - Stunts Coordinator, Dennis Lynton Clark - Screenwriter, Kay Rose - Supervising Sound Editor, Bruce Wineinger - Construction Foreman
The movie, set in the American West of the 1940s, tells the story of two ranchers (Caan and Fonda) whose small operation is threatened both by economic hardship and the expansionist dreams of a local land baron (Robards).
