Homestead

I was very excited by the first act of this film, mainly due to the very interesting set of characters. Betsy Sligh in particular stole the show as a feisty adolescent with a professed itch for dangerous adventure, but all four members of her frontier family are excellent and well cast.

The costumes and setting are also very authentic, except for the glaring absence of any farm animals - not even a dog or horse in sight. Even the band of outlaws who turn up arrive on foot!

Said outlaws appear at the start of the second act, and that is where things go awry. This group of characters is not nearly as interesting, starting with the tired old cliche of a "hellfire preacher" leader iof the gang. There's an effort to give the others distinctive personalities and conflicts, but their interactions are muddled, as is the last half of the script.

Although the adolescent fireball Irene is set up as a "Becky" type vengeful warrior, her character soon gets lost in the messy script and has minimal impact.

Making things even worse, this is a movie plagued with the kind of illogical last minute pauses taken by movie villains that allow their victims to escape the jaws of death. Believability goes out the door fairly early and with it any real suspense.

It's too bad the writer-director didn't have someone looking over his shoulder to question his bad decisions. This could have been a minor classic.