If you are looking for a very entertaining western, it's hard to top this one. It's fairly long at 134 minutes, but the deep cast and always-interesting story make the time fly by.
The first half of the film is about as good as it gets but two climactic scenes at the end get a little too carried away with the "Rambo" mentality of good guys not getting shot when they should have, etc. But, overall, it's so good it is still very highly-recommended. Among the "lists" you see on this website's message boards and elsewhere, you rarely see this movie mentioned among top westerns and that is a huge oversight.
There are four main "good guys" that are played by well-known actors: Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Kevin Costner and Danny Glover. I especially liked Kline as "Paden" with his gentlemanly manner about him and Glenn's voice always makes him interesting. Costner is so young looking he almost looks like a teenager.
Brian Dennehy, as the villainous "Sheriff Cobb," is verbally restrained in here, which was nice to hear, for a change but he's still intense and fascinating. (This movie marked the 10,000th time Hollywood made a lawman the villain since the 1960s).
The story is fun, a straight cowboy movie with no romances or gratuitous sex scenes thrown in and has the usual beautiful western scenery and photography. The only problem was the sound. The soundtrack is so loud so have to crank up your center speaker to hear the dialog over the music.
