(Some plot spoilers below, be warned!)
I have to rate this one star, because I felt totally exploited having sat through this. It presents itself (falsely) as the story of a charming, tough and pragmatic woman (a spinster, in that era) who has her own farm and is very independent and competent. She volunteers to take 3 insane women back from the Nebraska wilderness to "civilization" in Iowa, and along the way, picks up a drifter who is about to be hung. She saves him, and after a variety of typical "journey through the old west stuff" (Indians, rustlers, etc.), she abruptly kills herself. He tries to abandon the crazy women, but then has a change of heart and delivers them to Iowa.
Hilary Swank is very fine in her role as Mary Bee Cuddy, but god what a waste of her talent. She is presented as a strong character, and then kills herself because she is rejected (for the 2nd time in the film) by a man she throws herself at (the drifter, played gruffly by Tommy Lee Jones). This is incongruous and inconsistent with everything we've been shown up to this point. It would have made more sense if aliens had landed in a space ship.
There is no way a tough pioneer woman like Mary Bee would have killed herself over a romantic rejection. It makes no sense. It is also beyond ridiculous that anyone would consider her "ugly" back then -- check out some photographs from the 1850s. The most gorgeous celebrities of the day were not what we modern folks would have considered "hot" -- no makeup, greasy hair, etc. Mary Bee would have been a STONE FOX in 1850. Even if she'd been crippled, lame, pockmarked and blind in one eye -- her money and land would have attracted SOMEONE. There was a shortage of women in the Old West. This is a FACT. Men could not be choosy the way they are today, in a large modern city.
On the other hand, Tommy Lee Jones is a grizzled man in his late 60s. He really was repulsed by the attention from a 31 year old woman? even if she was fat and covered in pimples, he would have probably been so grateful to have sex, he would have fallen on his knees in gratitude.
There is something mentally wrong not with the 3 insane ladies here (whose back stories are very choppy and vague -- and it is not plausible that 3 of 6 women in the same town would have the same mental breakdown at the same time), but with the AUTHOR and SCREENWRITER for putting this hateful rubbish on the screen. It has to be the most anti-feminist, female-hating movie I have seen in my life, positing that a woman who is "plain" (which Swank very obviously is NOT, making it idiotic) has to kill herself, because not having sex or failing to marry is such an absolute disaster. Never mind the many thousands of spinsters of this era (some of them very famous: Jane Austen and Emily Dickinson, among others). It was not all that uncommon to remain single in the 19th century (for men or women).
Also it cannot be that surprising that Mary Bee couldn't find a husband in a tiny prairie settlement with approximately 10 people in the entire TOWN (6 of won are other women, 3 of which are insane). Didn't any of the husbands of the insane women want a new wife? a mother for their children? Yeesh.
Near the end, as if to rub it in, 70 year old Tommy Lee Jones proposes to a comely 16 year old waitress (Hailie Seinfeld, utterly wasted) as if to prove that "men only want extremely young hotties...see?"
If this was not a DVD borrowed from the library, I'd burn it. Avoid at all costs.
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