Yes, Hollywood has seen fit to expand the horizons of teenage girls and young women to include the western genre. Van der Beek is its secret weapon; a tall, young blond guy with a firmly established audience.
Remarkably, he manages to maintain the sensitive-yet-strong-man-of-the-90s thing that made him such a hit on TV in a movie full of gritty and steely-eyed warriors. Even more remarkable is the he doesn't come across as a wimp.
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 Director: Steve Miner
Cast: James Van Der Beek, Dylan McDermott, Ashton Kutcher, Rachael Leigh Cook, Alfred Molina, Leonor Varela
Classification: 13 V
Running Time: 90 minutes
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The film is supposed to be about Leander McNelly (Dylan McDermott), some legendary figure of the 1870s who fought wars and outlaws with equal vigour despite being a small guy and suffering from tuberculosis, yada yada yada. Maybe this movie even has some slight historical accuracies because McNelly manages to have half the young men under his command killed through the most elementary tactical blunder you can image. Those Yanks sure know how to pick their role models and their leaders.
So there are these cow-rustlers raping and pillaging their way through the fine state of Texas while everyone else is tidying up things after the Civil War. A vastly outnumbered force of rangers, each with deep-seated needs for revenge or self-actualisation, takes them on. Gun slinging and horse riding ensues.
Highly original it ain't.
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Rachael Leigh Cook being pretty as love interest Caroline Dukes. |
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Then again, there is probably some rule barring Westerns from being original. Wild Wild West is a good example of why this would be a good thing.
Not that there is anything particularly bad about Texas Rangers either, and no reason not to watch it. It is technically competent, the acting ranges from moderate to very good and the story is fairly entertaining. There are worse ways of spending an hour and a half.
A very minor highlight is the brief appearance of Rachael Leigh Cook as the obligatory pretty rancher's daughter. She is not your usual love interest type and there is something almost hypnotic about the expressive features for which she is known.
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