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Billy Crudup (Without Limits) plays Harrelson's best pal, just returned to New Mexico from service in World War II with hopes of starting a cattle ranch free from the greedy clutches of a local rancher (Sam Elliott) who dominates the town of Hi-Lo like a bootclad kingpin. Harrelson joins in the effort, but tensions rise when he connects with the sultry seductress (Patricia Arquette) with whom Crudup has fallen inexplicably in love. Harrelson has provoked others as well, and he seems primed for a fall, but The Hi-Lo Country is a film out of balance. Memorable moments are found in abundance, and the film's period detail is impeccable, but Crudup's character is so underwritten and underplayed that his role as narrator and ostensible hero has minimal dramatic impact. By the time fate deals its inevitable blow, it's too late to care. Frears has suffered from similar missteps before (remember Mary Reilly?), and The Hi-Lo Country leaves you wondering what Peckinpah might have done with the novel he so dearly admired. --Jeff Shannon

While the "Wild Bunch" was about the west during the period of industrialization around the turn of the century, "The Hi Lo Country" deals with the period of superindustrialization following World War II.

Woody Harrelson and Billy Crudup play two cowboys who fall for the same woman, Patricia Arquette. Harrelson as the violent "Big Boy" shows no sense of morality or humilty as the film's main protagonist, while Crudup as "Pete" is almost the exact opposite. Sam Elliot portrays a villanous rancher/industrialist, while the desirable Penelope Cruz is the overlooked, unrequitted love in Pete's life.

All of the actors turn in solid performances, but what makes this film special is the story itself, the direction, and Jerry Goldsmith's subtle, forceful soundtrack.


A Blank Spot on the Map   January 11, 2003
 4 out of 4 found this review helpful

The plot may creak a bit, but the film itself remains a superbly done period piece. It is Northeastern New Mexico, circa 1945, and the prairie vistas are wide open with an unbounded sense of freedom, but one that stretches out to monotonously barren horizons. Homesteading cattle is no easy task in the hardpan Hi-Lo country, and certainly no place for the Hollywood glamor factory. Except for a few questionable touches (Sam Elliott's leering villian, for one), the viewer gets a real sense of time and place, and of what goes on with the hard-bitten folks living there. The movie's core, however, remains Woody Harrelson's Big Boy whose boisterously callous behavior develops so slyly, you may not notice your own shifting responses. The jut-jawed Harrelson is near perfect, as are the cow town atmospherics with their smoky Saturday night honky-tonk. Seldom has anyone gotten a cowboy so right, and seldom has any film blended landscape of place with landscape of character more successfully than this one. Both demonstrate how sheer surface expanse can overwhelm frail emotional depth. Martin Scorese ( a most unlikely source for a Western theme) was a background producer, and I suspect it is he we have to thank for getting this very non-commercial story onto the video screen. Stephen Frears directs at a leisurely but revealing pace, allowing the occasional quiet but necessary moment to creep in. This minor gem should satisfy anyone curious about those obscure backwaters of the American West that appear mysteriously as blank spots on the road map. Despite undeniable concessions, Hi-Lo Country remains truer to its prosaic sources than the mock heroics and contrived mayhem of the traditional western, and is thus well worth a look see. Give it a try.