This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Prayer Changes Things
Plot Overview
At the end of the Civil
War, a whole passel of Confederate gold coins was lost to
history. The mystery is solved in part at the beginning of this
movie; the Laredo gang has some of it. Shots are fired in the
Nevada scrubland leaving outlaw Quirt Evans (Zachary Levi)
alone to share the take with a mean western rattler in its native
habitat. U.S. Marshal
McClintock (Tommy Lee Jones) dispatches the snake but Quint has
stashed the loot leaving no evidence to base an arrest on. The
disappointed marshal lets him go—this
time—figuring he'll get his in “the natural order of
things.” Thus is evinced the feelings of Doc Holliday in a
Bruce Olds novel, which color the whole movie:
Keep in mind that death, the death of the young that is, was far commoner in those days than it is now. My sister had died in infancy, my beloved mother in her prime, and among people of my acquaintance, such was more the rule than otherways. Death—its constancy—was different then. Not only was it more daily, more ongoingly ubiquitous, it was more personal. It was, that is, something with which all of us were intimately familiar, and something we felt no need to be embarrassed by or shrink from, let alone gainsay. Not that it wasn't feared—there was fear aplenty—but it wasn't feared in the same way, the way it is today. Death had yet to be outlawed, to be stigmatized, to come attached with a taboo, to be declared bad form, as if it were the fault of the person dying. It was then still considered a part of life. A perfectly natural part. (38)
A gut-wounded
Quint falls off his horse at the doorstep of the Worth
family. Pretty Penelope (Meg Fraser) nurses him back awake whence
he's hungry enough to eat a horse. They feed him right well. Food
is the way to a man's heart, they say, and this family is seriously
lacking in men. The American Civil War had left gazillions of
widows and a dearth of men. According to writer William Speidel,
“Over 360,000 young men had died as a result of the Civil
War, and there were war widows until they ran out your
ears” (107). The family had been praying the Lord change
the heart of neighbor Frederick Carson (John Pyper-Ferguson) who'd
dammed up their water, but the prayer wasn't answered until Quint
went and had a man-to-man talk with him. Laredo (Neal McDonough)
and his men come looking for the gold, but Quint has somehow
mislaid it. It won't go well with Penny's family until he
reacquires it. Laredo is sick and treating himself with
mercury, the old timey cure for syphilis. Reverend Levi Penrose
preached a sermon of Christ forgiving the thief on the cross, but
he shaved off a couple words from the relevant verse. This place
has lots of needs for which they're offering lots of prayers, but
God helps those who help themselves.
Ideology
This is the prayingest family ever to grace the big
screen; their legitimate needs are routinely met. It's expected
per, (1Cor. 3:21-22) “For
all things are yours; Whether … the world, or …
things present, or things to come; all are your's.” The boy
drew this world's water and later it flowed from a neighbor with a
changed heart. Penny had no sooner wished for an interesting man
than Quint was deposited outside her window. He was a product
of the wild west. He became her suitor and she got him going to
church, along the lines of, (1Cor. 7:16) “For what knowest
thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband?”
Penny was the quintessential holy
maiden per, (1Cor. 7:34)
“The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that
she may be holy both in body and in spirit.” She was virginal
in body and pure in contemplation. Quint remarks that the
family seems downright ignorant of the birds & the bees.
When he awakens from his delirium after mumbling sweet nothings to
various whores from his past, he sees a beautiful angel leaning
over him and remarks, “Last night was great!” Penny has
no idea what he's talking about. When she hands him a baby at
church, he quips, “Virgin birth?” Penny replies,
“What other kind is there?”
Penny's widow mother Irene (Jean Louisa) now has a suitor in the
making up the way in Frederick Carson who offers to bring her a
quarter of beef every so often and she him a dozen donuts twice a
week. The apostle Paul advises the widow, (1Cor. 7:39) “The wife is bound
by the law as long as her husband liveth; but if her husband be
dead, she is at liberty to be married to whom she will; only in the
Lord.” The Jews had a custom called levirate marriage. If a
woman's husband being an eldest brother died and they were
childless, she was obligated to marry his younger brother, or
in a pinch some other near kinsman, to continue the former's line.
The Jews in Corinth had asked the apostle Paul if any of that
carried over to Christianity, and he replied no, that the widow was
not owned by her former husband's family, that she had as open
season on men as did a single girl. “Only in the Lord”
means she had to court with holiness in body and spirit. That might
be hard to do if she were on loving terms with her ex's brother(s)
in which case it is but a small step to sexual intimacy. Irene had
a son and daughter at home to be chaperones, and Theodore a couple
of ranch hands, so they were safe.
Grandmother Harriet (Melissa Chambers) was old in years so in her field of competition would likely just follow celibate Paul's advice, (1Cor. 7:40) “But she is happier if she so abide, after my judgment.”
When Quint on his way to church meets
a dumbstruck crony Randy McCall (Nicholas Logan,) his manner
changes to his old ways now that he's got a critical audience. We
can't have a gang infiltrating church, as the apostle Paul advises,
(2Cor. 6:14) “Be ye not
unequally yoked together with unbelievers: ...” This is
plural, both in pronoun (“ye”) and object
(“believers.”) Singular, by himself, the church
could handle the visit, but not with a group. This derives from the
Old Testament law, (Deut. 22:10)
“Thou shalt not plow with an ox and an ass together,”
which Paul brought forward into church alliances but not to any and
all applications. Therefore when Quint pulled yoked with a
stallion to remove an obstacle to a rescue, he was not violating any
scriptural prohibition, nor would he in marrying the believing damsel.
When Rev. Levi Penrose in his sermon
paraphrased, (Luke 23:43)
“Today shalt thou be with me in paradise,” to say
“you shall be,” he used the number-nonspecific case of
the pronoun, which has confused this issue as by many Bible
versions soon to come.
Production Values
“” (2026) is a remake of the 1947 classic starring John Wayne and Gail Russell. This one was directed by Julio Quintana. Its screenwriters were Jaime Hernandez, Kevin M. Townsend, and Christopher Tuffin. It stars Zachary Levi, Neal McDonough and Tommy Lee Jones. The actors did a good job of humanizing the heroes.
MPA rated it PG–13 for violence/bloody images,
suggestive material and language. It was rife with camera shy
violence. There is one heart-stopping moment when eleven-year-old
Johnny—who loves to play with toy guns—gets the drop
with an expired lawman's pistol on gang member Tilly, a top hat
attired black, as they're about to wipe out the Worth family. Tilly
had guts to come forward and try to disarm the kid as if his
emancipation made him invulnerable.
Runtime = 1¾ hours.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
The writing was better than I could accomplish, but it seemed kinda pat. It was based on an accountably excellent western involving Quakers. It goes to show you, if ain't broke don't fix it.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Moderately well done action flick. Suitability for Children: Suitable for children 13+ years with guidance. Special effects: Average special effects. Video Occasion: Good for Groups. Suspense: A few suspenseful moments. Overall movie rating: Three and a half stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software, print.
Olds, Bruce.. Bucking the Tiger. Copyright © 2001 by Bruce Olds. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001. Print.
Speidel, William C. SONS of the PROFITS, or, There's No Business Like Grow Business! The Seattle Story, 1851–1901. Seattle: Nettle Creek Publishing Co., 1967. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org