A magnificent cast - the first hour is rather good; the second hour is frothy saga

Rating: 5/10 (2 May 2002)

This film seems to peter out around halfway, turning into a long slog of such beloved TV-styled epic melodrama with all the messy ingredients heaped on as if to fill out wherever the tale might be meandering to, and finally amounting to a heavy-handed overlay of froth and spume.
The cast is right: `cute boy' Brad Pitt carries out a decent interpretive role for the first half and degenerates into churning his way through the second half; Anthony Hopkins plays the landed gentleman with British aplomb and conviction, but barely survives the second half, in which, anyway, his part dwindles somewhat; Henry Thomas and Aidan Quinn are both really good, as well as the children who played the parts of the three brothers, though in the second half Aidan Quinn gets lost somewhere along the road to big business and politics but lacking panache and conviction; Julia Ormond is magnificent and reminds us that her birth town is not now only famous for its horse racing. Indeed, she is really the only character to keep up a certain level of interpretation through the film.
Having seen the film twice, I still maintain that one gets the feeling that the original story  which I have not read  published in Esquire Magazine, has been blown up out of all proportions; and totally unnecessarily. The first half of the film had all the ingredients working right, from a well-told story line, to the acting, and of course the magnificent photography. But from there the film seemed to veer off course so as to take on epic-like saga dimensions, unbecoming for what the film sets out to be. If we add to that James Horner's music becomes more and more strident as the film progresses  slogs on, I mean  it becomes evident that the overladen effectivism of the last 40 minutes or so turns into an undigestible mirky mess.
On my scale 5½ at most, and only for the first half. Despite my wife lapping up Brad Pitt; but she also laps up Matt Damon, Richard Gere et. al. There's no understanding women . Needless to say, I just lapped up Julia Ormond.......and the beautiful scenery of Dakota.