Texas Rangers: La revanche des justiciers

It's a real shame. "Texas Rangers", Steve Miner's new take on the founding of the famous band of Old West law enforcers, was held back from release for almost a whole year, subjected to numerous re-edits, dumped into theatres without any fanfare, and greeted with apathy and pathetic grosses. And you know what? It's one of the most entertaining films I've seen all year.

The film stars James Van Der Beek as an upright Eastern inventor's son who, on his first trip to the wild west, sees his parents and brothers killed before his eyes by marauding bandits. Desperate for revenge, he enlists with the Rangers, a more-or-less vigilante band led by Leander McNelly (Dylan McDermott), an ex-Confederate soldier with a vendetta of his own. McNelly's band of young gunslingers battle their way across the Texas border country, sniffing out bandits, doling out frontier justice, romancing the women-folk, etc., etc.

In other words, "Texas Rangers" does nothing you can't see in any B-western on Saturday afternoon TV. It's just that it does most of it a lot better than we've seen for quite some time. After the rather too glossy "American Outlaws", it's nice to get a Western with a gritty, authentic look. The towns look appropriately small and weather-beaten, the costumes nice and trail-worn. The only gloss here is on the guns...and I guess some of those young cowpokes are kind of glittery, too.

Miner's direction is curiously hot and cold here. He excels in quiet moments, dialogue and character, but his action scenes sometimes come up short. He seems particularly to have a bad habit of always putting his camera in the wrong place when his quick action payoffs arrive (bullets hitting home, knives landing on target). Still, the picture moves with lots of energy and excitement, and Miner is definitely to thank for that. Also, he scores in the big action climax, where the Rangers storm the desperadoes' Mexican hideout. Here, the camera always finds the right spot, and the result is a fast, pulse-quickening blowout.

A fine cast gives a lot of luster to the material. James Van Der Beek has never been just another WB pretty boy, and he takes to the Western with grace and conviction. Ashton Kutcher is okay as a hayseed gunman, but at times comes off a little too much like he's still on "That '70s Show". Usher Raymond is nicely understated as a former-slave ranger, and while Rachael Leigh Cook's rancher's daughter is really superfluous to the plot, her gorgeous face is absolutely essential. Fine supporting turns dot the picture, with standouts being Randy Travis and Robert Patrick as McNelly's lieutenants and Vincent Spano as a cocky, villainous gunslinger.

Really, though, this is Dylan McDermott's show. I have never been much of a fan of "The Practice", and was stunned by the force and power of McDermott's work here. He carries himself with solid-as-a-rock strength, and handles his quieter emotional moments with consummate restraint. He also looks superbly the part, eyes glowering beneath his black hat, guns blazing away from the back of his horse. Of course, it also helps that Scott Busby and Martin Copeland's screenplay turns McNelly into a complex and fascinating character. Haunted by the memory of his wife and child, (stolen by bandits while he was off in the wars), dogged by a sickness that is bearing down on his soul, always trusting the gun and the noose over the badge and the lawbook, McNelly is a classic western hero, bigger than life and still movingly human. It's a terrific performance, one of the best I've seen this year, and it makes me wish that they'll keep making westerns just so McDermott can keep acting in them.

Of course, they won't keep making them if people won't get off their duffs and go see the good ones when they come along. And trust me, "Texas Rangers" is one of the good ones, a top-class B-picture with an A-list lead performance. Give it a look, if it's still at your local theatre. I guarantee you won't be sorry you did.

I don't know why people are saying this is a horrible movie. It's actually a very enjoyable movie, but was a bit short, and short on character development. The actors do decently for being mostly TV actors, and the scenery was great, as well as the music. And it doesn't suffer from pacing problems. I almost wish I could have seen it in the theatre. Overall a good movie. As far as historical accuracy, I don't know, but Hollywood has been known to extend the truth a bit. For the most part, however, it is fairly believable. Don't listen to people that say it's a waste of time, make your own decision, but I believe it's at least worth a rental if not more.

In 1875, ten years after the end of the Civil War, Texas, especially the area along the Mexican border, is a wild, lawless place where ranchers and homesteaders are frequently threatened by bandits. The State Governor therefore decides to re-create the Texas Rangers, who had been disbanded after the Civil War, to uphold the law. The film follows the exploits of a company of Rangers led by Leander McNelly. The villain of the story is John King Fisher, the leader of a gang of outlaws who specialise in stealing cattle and then fleeing into Mexico, where the stolen cattle are sold to the Mexican army. The gang are ruthless killers, who have no compunction about murdering unarmed civilians in cold blood. It came as no surprise to discover that the film is loosely based on fact and that McNelly and King Fisher were real historical figures; "Leander McNelly" did not sound like the sort of name any scriptwriter would invent for a fictitious character. The film allegedly takes some liberties with the historical record, but these are unlikely to upset anyone other than experts on Texan history.

Although the Texas Rangers are, strictly speaking, a law enforcement agency rather than a military unit, the film bears more resemblance to a war movie than to a cop film. The plot is that old staple of war movies, the one about the tough, experienced commander who takes a group of raw recruits (most of them are young men with little or no experience of guns or policing crime) and turns them into a crack fighting unit. In their initial battle with the bandits, the Rangers fall into a trap, and many of the young and ill-trained men are killed. Nevertheless they regroup, attract new recruits and face off against Fisher and his men in a final showdown.

The film is directed by Steve Miner, previously known to me only as the man who made "Lake Placid", a dreadful horror-comedy unlikely to appeal to anyone other than those who feel that there is something inherently hilarious about someone getting their head bitten off by a gigantic crocodile. Fortunately, Miner makes no attempt to inject comedy elements into "Texas Rangers", and it is a better film than "Lake Placid", although that is not really saying much.

The past few years have seen something of a revival of the Western genre. Many recent Westerns ("Dances with Wolves", "Unforgiven", "Wyatt Earp", "3.10 to Yuma") have been grand films made on an epic scale, but "Texas Rangers" is a much more modest, small-scale effort, more reminiscent of the old Western B-movies. Its total running time is very short for a twenty-first century film- the version I saw on British television recently only ran to eighty minutes. It is essentially a good-guys-versus-bad-guys Western of the old school with plenty of action and gunplay but without any deep significance. There are occasional attempts to inject a note of moral ambiguity- McNelly can be uncompromising in his methods- but there is little doubt that he and his men wear the metaphorical white hats and the Fisher gang the black ones. This is the sort of thing that Hollywood used to churn out by the dozen in the forties and fifties. 5/10

From the opening shots through every scene acted out afterward NOTHING that is depicted in this movie EVER happened. It is a worse distortion than "Tombstone." I don't know where to start. For openers, the actor portraying McNelly admonishes a Ranger who is about to leave the service that he is "riding a Ranger horse and saddle, wearing Ranger clothes and carrying a Ranger gun," and if he leaves he will be arrested for theft. Anyone who knows squat about the Rangers of that day knows they had to bring their own horse, tack, weapons and clothes and then they would be considered for the service. Using Ranger badges for target practice is absurd beyond words. At that time the Rangers HAD NO badges. Just a letter stating they were Rangers. The makers of this movie either did not know or care. All a Ranger had to do to quit is ride away with what he brought. Also, John "King" Fisher was not a Mexican. He never shot down a crowd at a cattle auction. Leander McNelly's assignment in the Nueces Strip was to stop Mexican raiders from stealing cattle in Texas. His run in with John "King" Fisher was incidental and no shots were fired. McNelly and his men rode out to Fisher's ranch, arrested him and turned him over to a local sheriff. Days later they met Fisher and some of his men on the trail. Turns out Fisher had a friend who was a local judge and the judge let him bond out. McNelly had no authority to override that and Fisher went free for a time. The Black man McNelly took into his band was a former slave named Ben Kinchlow. He was hired as a tracker at no pay,just meals and equipment. When the shooting started between McNelly and the Mexican raiders, Kinchlow held the horses. The Mexican General was an officer in the Ruales, not the Mexican army, and he had no connection with Fisher. He was killed in the first shoot out with McNelly's men. The pistols McNelly's men used were black powder five shot revolvers. The pistols used in the movie had not been invented at the time. The rifles they used were single shot, black powder muzzle loaders. It wasn't until around three years after McNelly raided Mexico that the Rangers were given 1873 Winchesters. Over all the movie is an almost amusing "western" shoot-'em-up. The kind kids paid 15 cents to see back in the 1950s. It has nothing to do with the Texas Rangers. I don't know where the movie was filmed, but I know the land from Corpus Christi to Brownsville to the Rio Grande and is is an ancient sea bed, flat as a football field as far as you can see. This movie could have been titled "Leo Gorcey and the Dead End Kids" and the title would have been no more non-related than calling it "Texas Rangers."

The acting is great, the director did a great job and its a cool, typical cowboy film. If you like westerns watch it, if not i recommend watching it on a friday night if your plans have collapsed. You wont regret it...trust me