Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9780792850830
Format: Anamorphic
ISBN: 0792850831
Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: MGM (Video & DVD)
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2001-09-04
Running Time: 120
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Theatrical Release Date: 1990-10-19

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Spotlight customer reviews:

Customer Rating:

Summary: Tom Selleck Movie
Comment: This is one of my favorite movies. Tom Selleck plays Matthew Quigley as the quintessential American cowboy who takes a sharpshooter's job down under in Australia for a land baron (Alan Rickman). Not only does he fight the bad guys but he shows his compassionate side as well when he falls for Crazy Cora. Alan Rickman is a very good bad guy! A thoroughly entertaining movie with great scenery - they don't make 'em like this anymore!

Customer Rating:

Summary: Great Western
Comment: We have watched this movie so many times. We are on our 2nd VHS tape and I am buying the DVD to give to my son so his family can enjoy it.

I have always been a Tom Selleck fan but his best movies are the westerns. His Sackett movies with Sam Elliott make you believe that he really was a cow boy in the old west.

All I can say is that I wish we had more of these kinds of movies instead of some of the wierd junk that is out today.

If you love westerns then you will love this movie.

Customer Rating:

Summary: My Favorite Western
Comment: This just may be the best Tom Selleck movie ever. A great story that is enhanced by wonderful actors.

Customer Rating:

Summary: It's Tom Selleck at his leading-man finest...
Comment: Matthew Quigley, a stoic rifleman arrives in Australia in the 1860s a world far away from his home Wyoming... He is answering an ad from a British landowner who will use his talents as an expert marksman...

But things don't go according to plan and, at supper, and after we hear these words, "Nobody knocks me out of my own house," Elliott Marston becomes his arch enemy...

Quigley's arrival sets the tone of the motion picture perfectly, coming into a fight with an evil plantation owner before he has even set foot on Australian soil where some genuinely funny moments happened especially when he met Crazy Cora right off the ship...

After a showy display of his talents (continuously hitting a bucket at about a thousand yards) Quigley discovers to his horror that he has been hired for sniping Aborigines encouraged by the local authorities...

Tom Selleck is excellent in the role of a cowboy, exuding natural charm, cool spirit and dignity... He perfectly suited to the role of the finest sharp shooter hero with a moral... There is a moment when he teaches local Aborigines a secret, and it hits the correct note...

Alan Rickman is perfect as Marston, the arrogant, clever bad baron who thinks himself the fastest six-gun...

Laura San Giacomo believes Quigley to be a man she once loved and whose name is Roy... She has her own tragic past as obviously her romance between Quigley and herself... San Giacomo proves to be a lovable heroine...

Director Simon Wincer creates outstanding scenery with the desolate Australian landscapes...

Customer Rating:

Summary: Half pretty good - Half pretty bad
Comment: This movie suggests what sort of career Tom Selleck might have had if Westerns were in vogue. I prefer this gruff and grizzled persona. And he seemed to put his heart into it.

It helped that this movie had a superb director of horse operas, Simon Wincer, the Aussi director of PHAR LAP, THE LIGHTHORSEMEN (hopefully, there'll be a Region 1 DVDs available soon), and LONESOME DOVE. (I am particularly fond of his work in THE PHANTOM.)

There's a good supporting cast from Australia along with Britisher Alan Rickman who, as usual, kept stealing scenes as a rich rancher villain. Laura San Giacomo is a fine actress but she has an unfortunate role as a crazed American woman that joins the hero. Her role undermines the movie, taking away the "coolness" required of Westerns, probably becuz Selleck, as an actor, just can't compete with Laura.

But worse, there's a red gash across the plot of the movie called "hypocrisy". What does a white American have to teach white Australians about justice in the treatment of natives? Especially when the American situation is dismissed by Tom's character with one vague statement about the Indians not wanting to be forced from their lands. This is a situation that cries for clarification. But none is offered. Instead, along comes one of the most embarrassing plot turns political correctness has ever provoked: Laura San Giacomo's character finds and clings to an orphaned aboriginal infant as if it were her lost child.

I don't know if the Australian aboriginal people were that helpless -- where they need a fair-minded white man to rescue them. I know I don't like dark people depicted as helpless until a white person rescues them.

What's good about this movie -- Simon's direction, Tom's persona, Alan Rickman's villainy, the gunfights -- is dynamic and fun. What's bad about this film -- the crazed lady, the hypocrisy and the political correctness -- is abysmal.

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Editorial Reviews:

Tom Selleck plays Matthew Quigley, the cowboy hero in this traditional Western, set very untraditionally in Australia. After some macho silliness in the opening minutes, the story settles into a surprisingly evocative tale of Quigley, a sharpshooter who had come to the country to work for a land baron (Alan Rickman) and who is on the mend after a brutal attack. In the company of a woman (Laura San Giacomo) abused by that same baron, Quigley gets his strength and his shooting skills back while healing in the midst of aboriginal people as well as some stunning Australian settings. Director Simon Wincer (Phar Lap) brings a lot of integrity to this rare horse opera from contemporary Hollywood. --Tom Keogh