Tom Horn

Plot synopsis:
Tom Horn, a legendary frontier scout and tracker who helped capture Geronimo, drifts around the quickly disappearing western frontier. The story begins as he rides into a small town and provokes prizefighter Jim Corbett, ending up in a livery stable, unconscious and badly bruised.
Cattle company owner John Coble finds Horn in the livery and offers him his ranch to recuperate. He also offers him work investigating and deterring cattle rustlers who steal from the grazing association to which Coble belongs. He implies that the association will support Horn in implementing vigilante justice. Horn accepts the offer and receives the approval of U.S. marshal Joe Belle at an association picnic where he also catches the eye of the local schoolteacher, Glendolene.
Calling himself a "stock detective," Horn confronts cowboys at an auction whose cattle bear Coble's brand. After giving them fair warning he goes on a one-man crusade to kill or otherwise drive off anyone who rustles the cattle of his benefactors.
Horn's methods are brutal but effective. After a public gunfight, the local townspeople become alarmed at his violent nature and public opinion turns against him. The owners of the large cattle companies realize that while he is doing exactly what they hired him to do, his tactics will ultimately tarnish their image and begin to plot his demise. Joe Belle, who has political ambitions, wants Horn out of the way for the same reasons. Their conspiracy is set in motion when a young boy tending sheep is shot by a .45-60; the same caliber rifle Tom Horn is known to use.
Horn is slow to realize that he is being set up. Proud and convinced of his own innocence, he refuses to leave the county or avoid the town. Glendolene and Coble try to warn him to be careful, but Horn ignores the warning. Joe Belle coaxes Horn out of a saloon and back to his office where a man transcribing their conversation is hidden in the next room. Horn does not admit to the murders but states that "If I did shoot that boy, it was the best shot I ever made." Based on this conversation Horn is taken prisoner.
Unaccustomed to being unable to come and go as he pleases into his beloved hills, Horn seems lost. He breaks out of jail and attempts to flee. He is recaptured and convicted based on the testimony of the newspaperman who skewed the conversation between Belle and Horn.
As his execution nears, Horn accepts his fate and remains resolved in the moments before he is hanged.

Tags: cult, neo noir, violence

Review:
Directed by William Wiard and based on a true story, "Tom Horn" opens in 1901, in Wyoming, where McQueen meets John C.
Coble (Richard Farnsworth) who offered him to ease up at his place for a while Tom accepted, but he said I'd to earn my keep Seeing Horn with great ability with a rifle, and after speaking with the Association, John asks him to eliminate the rustlers who have completely wiped out their herd profits not to mention what the buzzards and the predators have done to their cash crops But after one incident has disturbed the Association in town, and the rustling has stopped, they determined to get rid of Horn forgetting he was only doing what they hired him to do Mc Queen plays well the Indian tracker "scared to death of lobster, the man of the West "afraid to lose his freedom and not be able to get back up in those hills again." Linda Evans is appealing as the school teacher from Hawaii who saw a man of the Old West trying to live in the New Richard Farnsworth is the loyal friend John C.
Coble who was quite sure that Tom never killed that kid John advices him not to try to break out of the jail He knows he can do it, but it's just admitting his guilt if he tries Billy Green Bush is the U.S. Marshal Joe Belle who asks the newspaperman to sit behind the door and write lying down what he hears real good Slims Pickens is the old Sheriff Sam Creed who arrested Tom With a legendary hero, great photography and good direction "Tom Horn" is very good Western to watch.
Watching a film again and again allows one to really study the work and pick up the director's deep intent for character and plot.Watching Tom Horn a few times allows one to see that it really is a good movie.
During the scene when Tom Horn escapes and is running from the deputies, I felt that McQueen was giving it his all, and that he knew his time was short, "so why not show the fans I've still got it?" The way he was gasping for air, and just gave up running made me think he wasn't acting, and however he felt after that take hurt me just the same watching it.So let's not totally ignore what McQueen was trying to do.
As Tom Horn, McQueen, then suffering from a deadly form of lung cancer that would take his life only six months after the film's release, had a fittingly poignant role as the famed scout who faces his execution (on trumped-up charges) with a quiet dignity and weary resignation.
Really an under-rated film.Although McQueen is tired (physically) from his cancer, he plays off his physical condition to portray a 19th Century western hero who is past his prime and society's 20th Century double-moral standards.He is quite believable in this one and manages to avoid playing Steve McQueen "Vin"/Josh Randall.Half-way through the film you have a pretty good idea how the story will end, but the characterizations are good enough to keep you in your seat or, now with videos, on your couch until the end.
The film is distinctive in four ways, the first being that Steve McQueen finally returned to the screen after having spent the 1970s elsewhere.
There were a lot of movies beginning in the late 1960s with Clint Eastwood's "spaghetti westerns" which focused on the grisly righteousness of law enforcement, but it wasn't until Eastwood's "Unforgiven" (1998) that he finally made a movie that approached the quality of "Shane" and "Tom Horn," and employed some panoramic camera work.
And it foreshadowed Farnsworth's sucide twenty-two years later, a few months after being nominated, finally, for an Academy Award for his brilliant portrayal in "The Straight Story." McQueen, on-screen, and Farnsworth, on-screen and off, epitomized that quality of the Westerner least understood by people in the rest of the nation.
The real Tom Horn said,  "The people in the Northeast hire us to protect them from the people in the South," and, "We find the thing, whatever it is, then somebody else gets the glory for bringing it down, and somebody else makes the money for taking it back to the folks in town," but "You can either laugh or cry at your fate, and that's not much of a choice, is it, pardner?" The droll stocism and sardonic wit of the cowboy, and the western tracker whether white or Indian, has always enchanted and mystified the rest of the nation, and never really been understood.
The movie, "Tom Horn," is a fitting tribute to the history and people of the northern plains, to Steve McQueen's artistry, to the memory of Richard Farnsworth, and to stories that are not easy to tell.
This film removes any doubt that at this stage of his career Steve McQueen had moved beyond his King of Cool persona and had become a great actor.
When he looks at his real-life good buddy Slim Pickens and tells him "Keep your nerve Sam, 'cause I'm gonna keep mine", it's one of the most poignant farewells in movie history.
It's a shame that this was not Mc Queen's final moment on film, or that "Tom Horn" was not his final movie.
" Tom Horn" deserves more praise , since this is a good western and one of last movies of Steve McQueen.
I felt sad at the end and that was the whole point.The movie made me sad , because it was not only the goodbye to Tom Horn, but also to Steve McQueen ("Papillon") .
Interesting but boring Western about the last days of a real-life Wyoming gunslinger named Tom Horn with Steve McQueen in the title role.
Good support cast who provides the best moments as Richard Farnsworth as old-timer who hires Horn , Slim Pickens and Billy Green Bush , both of them as Sheriffs , furthermore a beautiful Linda Evans and brief performance by the eternal secondary Elisha Cook Jr .
The hero is the hero because he can kill the bad guys; the fact that lawlessness most often means the bad guys kill the heroes is conveniently ignored, while the law is stigmatised as corrupt.'Tom Horn', Steve MacQueen's penultimate film, is an uncommonly strong western, even though Horn is both a sharp shooter and morally virtuous.
The difference in emphasis between this film and, say, Clint Eastwood's 'Unforgiven' is subtle but crucial: whereas in that film, Eastwood's character was presented as morally compelled to kill, Horn is simply the victim of living through times where the boundaries of individual licence are coming under strain.
As one of my personal favorite westerns I have looked at this film several times and wondered how McQueen was able to give such a fine performance as the title role of Tom Horn.
McQueen signed on to do the role in 1977, and would spent three years researching the role and even spending the night at Tom Horn's grave to help develop the his character.
The saga of Tom Horn - a real-life "enforcer" of Old West days - held a particular fascination for another legend.
Hollywood icon Steve McQueen starred in and executive-produced what would be his next-to-last movie, a gritty, exciting recreation of Horn's latter-day career in a turn-of-the-century West where gentler ways supplanted the law of the gun - and Horn would be an unwitting victim of that change.Linda Evans, Richard Farnsworth, Billy Green Bush and Slim Pickens head a strong cast in a film capturing the essence of a time when a man's word was only as good as his guns or fists.
Shot on serenely beautiful Arizona locations, Tom Horn indelibly brings to life one of the West's truly unsung heroes.McQueen's Tom Horn remains to me an unfairly dismissed film.
The film also built up genuine suspense towards the end and the audience really felt sympathy for the Horn character, a quality hard to find in films of today.The script was also at times sharp and was humorous (look at the great scene between Horn and the soon to be Heavy Weight Champion of the World) and it really complemented McQueen's acting performance.The film boasts excellent photography, shot on beautiful Arizona locations (the hills, the sky, the sunset) and direction from William Wiard.
Tom Horn remains an underrated film of excellence which any fan of Steve McQueen or Western's should not miss out on....
I'm a fan of both Westerns and Steve McQueen, but I found this film disappointing.
"Let me ask you something...Are you really Tom Horn?"The question might as well be "Are you really Steve McQueen", as it's really him lying beaten in a horse stall to whom Richard Farnsworth asks the question, in this sad, bedraggled Western farewell both to the celebrated bounty hunter and to the Hollywood legend who plays him here.
"Tom Horn" was McQueen's first action-hero role in over five years, and though he would play another bounty hunter just a few short weeks later in his last film, "The Hunter", this feels oh too much like his goodbye.It's a sad film, too much so by my lights.
McQueen has discarded his crown as "King Of Cool", and it is a bit awkward seeing him so discomfited, even if his off-center performance gives "Tom Horn" nearly all the spark it has.Horn is a throwback to the old West, who in the dawn of the 20th century is hired to do away with some cattle rustlers plaguing a community.
The film then becomes a long, slow waltz, between Horn on one end and the gallows on the other.The film is credited to director William Wiard, though Mike Sutton of DVD Times and TrevorAclea on this site say it was McQueen himself at the helm, jumping in after firing more seasoned directors.
Whether Horn really did murder the boy in question seems in doubt, but McQueen's character allows for no explanation, a strange and frustrating stance for an innocent man to take."I'm a little bored," Horn says.
He gives one of his very best performances as Tom Horn, personification of the Old West with all its strengths, flaws and contradictions.
The director, William Wiard, was an experienced TV hand who feels out of his depth handling the bigger picture, although individual scenes are controlled pretty well.All in all, McQueen is the reason to see this movie, although its fundamental theme - the duplicity of vested interests - is unfortunately as current as ever.
What makes this movie at least partially interesting is the fact that it's based on the writings of actual Tom Horn, an Old West lawman, outlaw and gunfighter.
Character motivations are poorly established or they seem to change between scenes - I theorize this is because the real life events probably took place over significant amount of time, which the movie doesn't establish at all.
And then there's the ending, which I thought a total cop-out, but it is explained somewhat by the "based on real events" thing, so in retrospect it wasn't THAT bad.Still, Steve McQueen is rather good as Tom Horn, the rest of the actors are passable, the film looks fine given its age and if you like westerns, you should get your fix of cattle ranches, big open plains, gunfights and blue skies from this film.Not a good film in my opinion, mostly because they didn't seem to know how to adapt the original writings to a working film.
Tom Horn is one of the last pictures ever made by Steve McQueen.
This picture was released in theaters on March 28 1980 starring Steve McQueen as Tom Horn Linda Evans as Glendolene Kimmel, and Richard Farnsworth as John C Coble.
I thought Steve McQueen was great in his role as Tom Horn.
Some actors when they play a hero like Tom Horn let it go to their head and Steve McQueen was nowhere close to that.
"Tom Horn" is Steve McQueen's second to last film.
In the movie, he plays a real life character--a gunman in the west that was a hired gun and reportedly killed a lot of people.
The movie also shortchanges the extraordinary real early life of Tom Horn..
Yet, I was glad to have finally seen this movie, however, even if it was so long overdue, and think that many of the poor reviews (not here) are unjustified.This movie is SO Steve McQueen: a tough guy with few words, a likeble man ("Tom Horn,"the title character) who gets the job done no matter how tough the assignment; a guy the prettiest woman in town goes for and a man who gets respect of the other (good) men in town.
To paraphrase McQueen in this story, it's like, "Hey, if you don't know who I am and what I'm all about I am by now, well....do what you gotta do."Anyway, much of the film is a good western, nicely photographed and uniquely low-key with McQueen hired by a bunch of ranchers (an "Association") to put a stop to all the rustling that has been going on in the area recently.
**Contains Possible Spoilers**	A dramatization based on the true story of a legendary frontiersman, `Tom Horn' depicts the final years in the life of this tracker, interpreter and hero of the Apache Wars.
Just another guy looking for work; and this is the Tom Horn that McQueen delivers to the screen, perceptively avoiding any feigned heroics or superfluous contrivances that would have given him that sense of being larger-than-life.
His Tom Horn is a proud man, without being steeped in ego; and it's that down-to-earth attitude that makes him real, and gives distinction to this film.
With an excellent supporting cast which includes Linda Evans (Glendolene), Slim Pickens (Sam), Roy Jenson (Mendenhour) and Geoffrey Lewis (Walter Stoll), `Tom Horn' is an honest study of life during an era of change; of the politics and prevailing attitudes that contributed to the shaping of a new century.
Steve McQueen's next to last film was a study of western legend Tom Horn and the last job he took in Wyoming as an enforcer for the big ranchers in 1903.McQueen's real life Tom Horn is in the same dilemma as the fictional John Bernard Books that John Wayne created for The Shootist.
In the end unlike Books in relatively civilized Carson City choosing the manner of his demise, Horn gets hung probably for a crime he didn't commit, but mostly because he was an anachronism in the 20th Century.Steve McQueen turns in a good performance as the aging Horn and such fine players as Linda Evans, Billy Green Bush, Slim Pickens, the aforementioned Richard Farnsworth ably support McQueen.
The real Tom Horn was one of the most tragic gunfighters of the Old West, but the story here only deals with the last couple years of his life, just as it's star was sadly winding down his.
Steve McQueen has always been one of my favorite TV cowboy and movie action heroes, and it was discomfiting to see him trudge through this role knowing that his end was near from the ravages of mesothelioma.A better film would have had a young McQueen portray the former Army chief of scouts who left home at fourteen to escape an abusive father, live with the Apaches, and later track Geronimo to his eventual capture.
For the spectator who has seen McQueen as the unbeatable hero of The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape,watching him carrying the rifle ,tracking down the rustlers while catching his breath,running heavily,but yet never missing a target, is hard to accept.As the film also reaches its end,showing Horn getting arrested,his look gazed at the mountains afar through the bars of the jail window,his bright eyes,his calm face,you realize that this is not a defeat.
I was so shocked by Steve McQueen's death, that I could not see this film during years.
Tom Horn is an unusual western, a must for everyone who likes the genre.
This idea must have sounded good over lines and drinks in pre-production.Mostly an uninspired retread of a standard Western formula - "a man of the old west trying to live in the new," as Linda Evans bluntly rasps in one of the awkward love scenes.
Steve McQueen is memorable, but "Tom Horn" isn't..
Steve McQueen delivers a memorable performance filled with character and nuance as the real-life Indian tracker, cavalry scout, and range detective in television director William Wiard's biographical western "Tom Horn," co-starring Linda Evans, Richard Farnsworth, Billy Green Bush, Elisha Cook, Geoffrey Lewis, and Slim Pickens.
That's for the story.Yet many 'better' stories could have been told about Tom Horn actually, the man was legend material yet never got a proper western to pay tribute to his legacy.
Horn couldn't care less about the twentieth century.It was quite a bold choice to dedicate the film to the anticlimactic demise of the Western legend, but who knew at that time that the destiny of Steve McQueen would follow an eerily similar path, ending brutally in 1980.
In the film, Horn isn't much a hero as a martyr of what remains from the 'frontier spirit'.Whether McQueen saw all that in Horn or simply wanted to rehabilitate him (which is good enough a reason) is irrelevant, just like Michael Cimino's "Heaven's Gate" or Coppola's "Apocalypse Now", some movies are made in such frantic and chaotic contexts they can only be destined for the best or the worst, and some of them unfortunately get too personal for the business.
"Tom Horn" might have been greater or more iconic had Siegel directed it but I believe the film came just at the wrong time for the Western genre...
"Tom Horn" drifts across so many conventions of the Western genre, it could have been from Bloody Sam himself (hell, even Slim Pickens is there).