Four cowboys meet by happenstance in the Western wilderness, have lots of fun, and then are subject to serious transgressions by a corrupt sheriff and some evil cattlemen. Kline, Glenn, Costner, and Glover are the initially happy travelers. Their characters' names are Padem, Emmet, Jake, and Mal. I conducted a scholarly study of cowboy names of the period and not one of them had a name like Padem, Emmet, Jake, Mal, Matt, Link, Ringo, Jesse, Clay, or Latigo. As a matter of fact, the four most common names were Governeur, Montmorency, Noble, and Bolingbroke. The results can be found in "Onomastics of the Post Civil War American West," readily available in the back of the bottom shelf of my grand garçon, never published and never will be.
The movie? It starts out kind of fun. Costner is a light-hearted young man and a dead shot. You'd have difficulty imagining him in his later roles. Danny Glover is a dead shot too, with his Henry rifle. In fact they're all dead shots and fast draws except the bad guys who are uniformly slow and ragged in their aim. Linda Hunt has a rather prominent role as a saloon manager. She was born with hypopituitary dwarfism but is a fine actress and actually looks pretty good here. Ben Goldman is an overdressed professional gambler, a sneak who sides with Brian Dennehy, the corrupt sheriff, although how and why he does so, only the editor knows.
A few laughs and action aplenty without bath tubs of gore. All the usual conventions of the genre are adhered to. It's diverting and sometimes fun.
The movie? It starts out kind of fun. Costner is a light-hearted young man and a dead shot. You'd have difficulty imagining him in his later roles. Danny Glover is a dead shot too, with his Henry rifle. In fact they're all dead shots and fast draws except the bad guys who are uniformly slow and ragged in their aim. Linda Hunt has a rather prominent role as a saloon manager. She was born with hypopituitary dwarfism but is a fine actress and actually looks pretty good here. Ben Goldman is an overdressed professional gambler, a sneak who sides with Brian Dennehy, the corrupt sheriff, although how and why he does so, only the editor knows.
A few laughs and action aplenty without bath tubs of gore. All the usual conventions of the genre are adhered to. It's diverting and sometimes fun.