Johnson County War (2002) – DVD

*/**** Image C+ Sound B+
starring Tom Berenger, Luke Perry, Rachel Ward, Burt Reynolds
screenplay by Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana, based on Riders of Judgment by Frederick Manfred
directed by David S. Cass, Sr.

by Walter Chaw The Hallmark Channel's epic remake of Heaven's Gate–based, like that film and Frederick Manfred's Riders of Judgment, on the Johnson County Range War of 1892–does the impossible by making Michael Cimino's legendary boondoggle gain esteem in memory and by comparison. Actually a remake in subject only, legendary stuntman-turned-really bad TV director David S. Cass, Sr.'s Johnson County War (clocking in at an inexcusable 180 minutes) is a dog's breakfast of hoary western clichés, appalling film craft, and wooden performances from B-list talent.

Cain (Tom Berenger: moustachioed, somnambulant) is an independent Wyoming cattle puncher beset by organized cattle barons seeking to steal his land and livestock. Brother Harry (Luke Perry) is naïve and full of vinegar, and Queenie (Rachel Ward: astonishingly miscast) is the requisite whore with a heart of gold. Why there are three hours separating set-up and doomed showdown (Cain and Harry vs. the forces of evil) is one of those sadistic truisms that can only be attributed to a predictably awful Burt Reynolds wanting more rope with which to hang his already staggering career. As stone-faced killer and cattle-baron hired gun Marshal Hunt Lawton, Reynolds wheezes, squints, and fails to convince for a moment that he's not having his lines fed to him by an intern, stage-whispering just off camera.

Awash in continuity errors, stunningly awful dialogue (written by the "Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry," the DVD cover trumpets), and the sort of "aw, shucks" shorthand that tends to marginalize the central historical event and all involved, Johnson County War is mind-numbing during the long stretches between it being unintentionally hilarious. It's a prototypical television mini-series: critic-proof ("whadja spect?" wags will astutely ask) and potentially addictive for its comfortable black-and-white worldview and entrenched narrative progression. There is a mute fascination inherent with watching the inevitable happen, and I suspect that supporters of this film are also fond of watching ice melt–which, long about the middle of the second hour, you'll either believe that's what you're doing, or wish you were doing instead.

THE DVD
Artisan brings this soporific gem to the DVD format in a perfunctory 1.33:1 full-frame video transfer that is all monochrome and bland. As this is probably the way that Cass Sr. decided to shoot the thing, however, it's hard to find much fault with our friends at the telecine. The Dolby 2.0 soundtrack is surprisingly full, however, with its penultimate shootout (that is suspiciously identical, down to the dog, to the one in Charles Bronson's shrug-worthy Canuck shoot-'em-up Death Hunt) reproduced with nice separation and effects. Rounding out the DVD: a 19-image still gallery (captioned in the most banal way imaginable); and a five-minute "Behind the Scenes" featurette that is as standard and dull as the film it stumps. Though the box promises a "trailer gallery," unless it's buried in an Easter egg I'm too dim to uncover (and that's likely), it's been left off. A mercy, I'm guessing, as I could do without viewing a trailer for Dinotopia or some other bloated Hallmark made-for-television stillbirth.

178 minutes; NR; 1.33:1; English Dolby Surround; CC; English subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Hallmark/Artisan