Previews have been hyping this film for quite awhile, as the next great “masterpiece” featuring Hillary Swank and Tommy Lee Jones. I thought it was just ok. There is some superb acting, but it was a little choppy and took a weird turn two-thirds of the way through.
Swank plays Mary B Cuddy, an aging single woman in the frontier trying to keep a farm by herself. She is rebuffed by men she tries to finagle in to marrying her, but plods on showing that she can do everything herself anyway. When 3 woman in the territory come down with mental illness, due to different reasons, and are no longer able to be looked after by their husbands, Cuddy volunteers to take them to a church in Iowa where they can be cared for. She enlists Jones’ character Briggs to help.
Most of the movie is spent showing the journey, and the various events that led putting these women in the position they are in. You don’t really know if they’ll come out of their predicament before the end, or if they will even make the journey due to hardships they face along the way. As I said, there is some truly brilliant acting, but I don’t feel it reached the heights it wanted to. Worth a single viewing for the portrayals alone, as besides Swank and Jones it features a strong cast of Meryl Streep, John Lithgow, and James Spader, among other familiar faces.
Jons Movie Takes 