Reviewing Movies

Jesse James father was a slave-owning Southern Baptist Minister who died in the Gold fields of 49. Since the brothers were too young and woman could not own property their Father’s Executor squandered their birthright. Frank and Jesse honed their skills as guerrilla raiders for the Confederacy during the Civil War. Returning home after the war they became involved in another battle with the railroad and its ruthless minions who were buying up farmland at cut-rate prices and forcing their neighbours off their land. Robbing the banks that held railroad money seemed the best way to get back at the railroad, after all the banks were insured. After eight of them pulled off a robbery that netted eight thousand the newspaper reported that 20 made off with $50,0000. Deciding that the banks were cheating the insurance companies henceforth the gang issued their own press releases. They also found it strategic planning to share the wealth they amassed with the people they saw the banks as victimizing therefore ensuring a sympathetic populace to get their backs and ensuring their lasting Robin Hood like myth. Whereas Jesse was a charismatic man of action it was his quiet brother Frank who was the intellectual thinker of the gang. Their cousins the Youngers, Cherokee tracker Tom, Clell Miller, and Loni Packwood round out the core gang.

It is the mischievous gleam in Colin Farrell’s eye that defines the movie. Who says robbin banks can’t be fun and as long as nobody does anything stupid why shouldn’t it be civil? Don’t get me wrong, people get injured and die in this movie and dynamite explodes and guns blaze; but it is told from the point of view of the James Brothers with a comedic touch that informs even the most dangerous scenes. The army, the Pinkerton Men, and the railway men play comic relief. As Alan Pinkerton Timothy Dalton shows undisguised admiration for the man he is paid to bring to justice. The banks and the railroad are the bad guys here, not the James-Younger Gang.

Tom is a ‘rentboy”. He has a gym-built chest, a bubble butt, and well-toned, taut little body along with a child’s voice. He has a fashionable wardrobe of form fitting clothes and a swank apartment. He also has the scars, scratches and bruises on his chest and back to prove that his keeper likes it rough. He couldn’t tell you whether or not he’s gay, he just knows that’s how he earns his living. In common with most sex trade workers sex is not something he does but a thing that is done to him. As much as possible during these encounters he has an out of body experience to divorce himself from what is being done to him; his happy place being memories of better times in childhood before his Mother was carted away by police for killing his unfaithful Father. When a female friend offers to go to bed with him he allows as how he would be incapable of deriving any enjoyment from the experience.

This is an ‘R’ Rated movie with sex, violence, and murder depicted on screen. At one point we see Tom take a shower in the buff. An explicit version is available on the web. Daniel Newman who plays Tom has left the movie racket and now works as a Personal Trainer and video model. It would appear he keeps himself in shape.

From a Twenty-First Century perspective one could argue as to whether bringing Christianity to a primitive Amazonian Tribe did them any favours or was preferable to the slavery envisioned by the Conquistadors. Whatever your stand on the matter a group of Jesuit Missionaries make first contact with a primitive tribe and with their co-operation found a thriving self-sufficient colony. Unfortunately their efforts conflicted with the exploitation planned by the mercenaries and slavers who used their political influence to force the Pope to order that The Mission be disbanded. A Cardinal is dispatched to give these orders. This movie then is about the efforts of those peace loving missionaries to defend their colony. There can be only one outcome.

Richmond Percival Hobson Jr. was a New York City Stockbroker before he took to the wilds of Northern BC with his partner Panhandle Phillips to create the largest ranch on earth in some of the most forbidding territory on earth. The real Hobson wrote 3 books about the experience and seems an affable, level-headed dreamer. Pan on the other-hand is taciturn, moody and mischievous. They seem an unlikely pair but somehow they made the partnership work. Finding cowboys to wrangle cattle in the middle of WW#2 was quite another matter.

I’ve read the books so seeing them re-invented for television was a bit of a wrench. This happened twice around about 1998-2000. Unfortunately by this time the hero of the piece had been dead for over 30 years dying of heart failure at the relatively young age of 59. He was played by two young Canadian Actors in a CBC TV Series and a TV Movie, Ted Atherton played his partner in both. Yannick Bisson hails from the unlikely locale of Montreal City. Where he gained his riding chops I’m not sure. The TV Movie has been released on DVD and I recently rewatched it. In it Chad Willet from New Westminster BC plays Hobson and to my mind better embodies the character. Tall and rangy he has an impish smirk that makes his partnership with Pan believable. Both actors have been around Canadian TV from their teen years.

By the way, I liked Hobson’s books and recently Phillips’ daughter has been writing about growing up on the ‘Home Ranch’. Never occurred to me to think that such a crusty individual actually found a woman who could stand him.