It’s
1951 with Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in a film called THE
AFRICAN QUEEN directed by John Houston taking place in 1914 only now it
stars Hillary Swank and Tommy Lee Jones, directed by Tommy Lee Jones,
co-written by Tommy Lee Jones and co-produced by Tommy Lee Jones. It
takes place in the 1850s in Middle America where the East is considered
Iowa and the film is called THE HOMESMAN and though similar to the old
movie it takes many different turns.

The film opens with a wide
shot showing Mary Bee Cuddy (Hillary Swank) behind a mule driven plow
and we soon learn she is a single hard working, self efficient woman who
is the equal of any man when it comes to farming, shooting, horseback
riding plus running a neat, tidy house that could possibly have built by
her. When proposing marriage, as a business prospect, to two different
men each in their way tell her no saying that she is bossy and plain.

Due
to a set of circumstances she ‘blackmails’ George Briggs (Tommy Lee
Jones) into helping her take 3 woman who have gone insane by the life
they have been living, back east. The women consist of  Arabella Sours
(Grace Gummer) has lost her children and holds a doll to substitute for
them, a Norwegian woman, Gro Svendsen (Sonja Richter)  whose mother dies
and is put out in the snow by her husband and the third, Theoline
Belknap (Miranda Otto) who does something that I feel would be a spoiler
and is one of two genuine shockers that take place in the movie.

The
women are locked, and tied up, in a wagon let out to sleep, go to the
bathroom and eat while Cuddy and Briggs fight the usual circumstances in
the western genre such as being faced with Indians, an out of hand
gunslinger, bad weather, starvation among other happenings. A little
past the hour plus time of the two hour film the second shocker comes
without any warning or explanation and turns the film into another
direction.

Hillary Swank, Tommy Lee Jones as well as the three
women Grace Gummer, Sonja Richter and Miranda Otto though Jones the
co-writer and director could have given the women some more screen time
and more of what got them to their present condition.

Though the
film belongs to the two co-stars there is a strong supporting turn by
John Lithgow as a reverend, what appears to be a friendly gesture to
Jones, or because she is the mother of Gummer, a cameo by Meryl Streep
and a hammy turn by John Spada.

From the opening shot the
cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto is outstanding and the music by Marco
Beltrami is unobtrusive which is a good thing. Too bad he couldn’t talk
Jones out of singing and dancing two numbers.

Though I wouldn’t recommend it THE HOMESMAN is not a ‘bad’ film.