I'd been waiting for some time to finally catch this on the Encore Western Channel and now that I've seen it I'm sadly underwhelmed. 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. As a Pinkerton agent, Horn grew dissatisfied with the legal bureaucracy and became a 'stock detective' capturing rustlers, only to become disillusioned by the corruption of the legal system. As his own man, Tom Horn became judge, jury and executioner, crossing the line from soldier to assassin, placing a rock under his dispatched victims as a personal signature.
The events leading to the eventual incarceration and execution of Horn are depicted accurately enough, though I don't know why it was necessary to change the names of the characters. The young boy Jimmy Nolt is a stand-in for William Nickles, the murdered son of a Wyoming sheep rancher. Fans of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" will probably recognize the name of lawman Joe Lafors; it was Lafors who tricked Horn into confessing to the murder of Nickles.
Sad as it is to see McQueen go through the motions, I had the sense that he was giving it his all in one of his final pictures. The look on his face as he prepares his character for the gallows seems to presage his own passing in a few short months and you have to wonder how much of that weighed on his mind during the filming of that scene. Personally, I prefer to go with my youthful memories of McQueen as one of my all time favorite characters, that of bounty hunter Josh Randall.
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. As a Pinkerton agent, Horn grew dissatisfied with the legal bureaucracy and became a 'stock detective' capturing rustlers, only to become disillusioned by the corruption of the legal system. As his own man, Tom Horn became judge, jury and executioner, crossing the line from soldier to assassin, placing a rock under his dispatched victims as a personal signature.
The events leading to the eventual incarceration and execution of Horn are depicted accurately enough, though I don't know why it was necessary to change the names of the characters. The young boy Jimmy Nolt is a stand-in for William Nickles, the murdered son of a Wyoming sheep rancher. Fans of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" will probably recognize the name of lawman Joe Lafors; it was Lafors who tricked Horn into confessing to the murder of Nickles.
Sad as it is to see McQueen go through the motions, I had the sense that he was giving it his all in one of his final pictures. The look on his face as he prepares his character for the gallows seems to presage his own passing in a few short months and you have to wonder how much of that weighed on his mind during the filming of that scene. Personally, I prefer to go with my youthful memories of McQueen as one of my all time favorite characters, that of bounty hunter Josh Randall.