bkoganbing
It's too bad that Sam Elliot was born about 30 years too late and was not on the scene in the 40s and 50s when westerns began to change to more adult themes. He was as born to the saddle as a Joel McCrea or a Gary Cooper was, Elliott would have been a superstar then.Not that he's done too badly now as The Desperate Trail shows. It's just that westerns have limited release for a specialized audience now. When we meet Elliott he's a marshal escorting a handcuffed prisoner for a date with a hangman. His prisoner is Linda Fiorentino and a holdup interrupts the journey.When all is said and done another passenger Craig Sheffer makes off with several grand in Wells Fargo money and Fiorentino is loose and Elliott in a most embarrassing position. Naturally the marshal rounds up a posse and pursues the outlaws.But this is a western with modern and adult themes, more modern than was discussed even in those beginning days of adult westerns. Sam and Linda do have a relationship of sorts and Linda is a battered spouse. As the film progresses Elliott is shown not to be the upstanding marshal that he professes to be and what we expect in the usual type of westerns.If you like action there are more than enough shooting incidents to satisfy your craving. Elliott, Fiorentino, and Sheffer give fine performances in the leads.A western with some very modern themes.
Spikeopath
The Desperate Trail is directed and co-written by P. J. Pesce with Tom Abrams. It stars Sam Elliott, Craig Sheffer, Linda Fiorentino and Frank Whalley. Music is scored by Stephen Endelman and cinematography by Michael Bonvillain. Plot sees Fiorentino and Scheffer team up as wanted fugitives out on the lam, pursued by lawman Sam Elliott, who will so anything outside the law to get his way.The violence is loaded and film aspires to be a Leone and Peckinpah hybrid, so much so it would be easy for the casual Western viewer to believe they were witness to something special in the genre. Slow motion action and explosive blood squibs are the order of the day, throw in some genre staples and you are good to go. After a great opening, a false dawn if ever there was one, Pesce's (From Dusk Till Dawn 3/Sniper 3) picture suffers from bad direction, bad editing, awful musical scoring and the biggest problem of all, gross miscasting. Fiorentino, a fine actress and a fine looking woman, is no rooting tooting vengeance seeking blood spilling cowgirl, while Scheffer? Seriously? Who thought that was a good idea? And Endelman scores it like it's the bastard son of science fiction and Australia outback.Elliott is good value, he almost always is, but even he at times looks to be wondering just what he is doing in such poor fare. Bonvillain's photography holds up well, with some nice broad lensing of the Santa Fe and Tesuque Pueblo locations; with one gorgeous red sky shot particularly impressive, and the final shoot out is competently staged. But this is a bad Western film, even by TV movie standards. Cribbing from better movies and better film makers does not a good film make, case in point, The Desperate Trail. 3/10
FightingWesterner
Working class criminal Craig Sheffer teams up with escaped murderess Linda Fiorintino, who's better at killing than he is. Together they plot a bank robbery fall in love (sort of), and try to elude ruthless US Marshal Sam Elliott, the father of the man Fiorintino killed.A solid enough western, The Desperate Trail rides the early 90's wave of renewed interest in the genre, brought about by the success of Unforgiven and Dances With Wolves.This has enough blood, guts, and bullets to satisfy action fans, as well as good production values and performances, especially Elliott who's apparently as good at being nasty as he is at being folksy.My only problem is that despite the fact that the climax is action-packed, it stops just short of being satisfying.
The Continental Op
Sam Elliot and Linda Fiorentino go toe to toe in this very entertaining TV western. Elliott plays Marshall Bill Speakes, a lawman obsessed with catching Sarah O'Rourke (Fiorentino), his fugitive daughter-in-law. It seems that Sarah killed her husband. Speakes is understandably rather upset and tears up the west pursuing her when she escapes his grasp. Along the way, Sarah allies herself with a dandified highwayman and the story becomes a rather quirky Bonnie and Clyde story. But things aren't always what they seem as Speakes' tactics for catching the pair become increasingly ruthless as Elliott goes against his usual good-guy image. The audience sympathies are fully with the outlaws in this story. Writer-Director Pesce gives the story a relentless pace as the antagonists maneuver around each other. Visually, the film owes a lot to Leone and Peckinpah (right down to the slow motion death scenes) but the plot is so fast-paced and the characters are so interesting, the pyrotechnics never over-shadow the story. If you are a fan of either Elliott or Fiorentino, The Desperate Trail is a must see.
AD
