Review: The Hi-Lo Country
There's something a bit lacking in The Hi-Lo Country. It can't be the grandeur of the Old West for we are graced with breathtaking panoramas of Santa Fe, New Mexico from first scene to last. Nor can it be the cast who keep things interesting even when the movie insists on being stillborn in pace. No, what's missing in this tale of desire, friendship and betrayal is a sense of romantic fatalism. Its absence is particularly perplexing as director Stephen Frears had shown such deftness in conveying it in his previous films (Dangerous Liaisons, The Grifters, My Beautiful Laundrette, and Prick Up Your Ears).
It all started with a horse. A horse named Old Sorrel who bucked his owner Pete (Billy Crudup) off while standing at rest. In selling the horse, Pete meets up with Big Boy (Woody Harrelson) and thus is a great friendship born. They run together, chase women, drink, and give a good brawl. The good times are interrupted by World War II and when Pete returns from the war, trouble bubbles to the surface. Jim Ed Love (Sam Elliott) has bought up most of Hi-Lo's lands and businesses and the cowboys are in the twilight of their time. Then there are the women: the married Mona (Patricia Arquette), whom Pete lusts after but cannot have, and the one he settles for, Josepha (Penélope Cruz), whose love isn't enough to make him forget Mona.
"I'm not sure if it's safe having you this close to home," the married Mona whispers to him. She's clearly not happy in her marriage to Les Birk (John Diehl) -- "Everyone else was at war" -- but he works for Jim so she's afforded some luxuries in her life. But she can't afford to flaunt her affair with Big Boy -- yes, Big Boy, Pete discovers to his chagrin. Of course, Big Boy doesn't realize that Pete's got a hankering for Mona, that he can't sleep for the thought of her. But Pete and Big Boy understand the pull more than they let each other know. "One look at her, you know she's worth the risk," Big Boy grins, "Hell, the risk's the best part of it."
Indeed, with Arquette playing her, Mona is worth the risk. Arquette's blue eyes are set off by the auburn of her hair and she makes for a ballsy and delicate femme fatale. It's her nature to be seductive and to want more than she has. And what she desperately wants is out of Hi-Lo and, if Big Boy can get her out of there, then he's the man for her. Arquette softens the edges and highlights Mona's vulnerability so when she and Pete have their calamitous rendezvous, she is more unwitting instigator than teasing seductress.
Harrelson could very well have been Big Boy in another life; the character's skin seems to be his own, he's that at home with Big Boy. The character is a bit of a cocky psychotic -- always on the lookout for the next brawl or waiting for the next tryst with Mona; he's damn well ready for anything -- but Harrelson derails Big Boy from being a cartoon. There are amazing interplays with costar Cole Hauser, who plays his brother Little Boy who has gone to work for Jim. Big Boy constantly chides him for being a slave to Jim by proving to Jim that he is still Little Boy's lord and master when all is said and done. The tension between the brothers builds until one snaps and the reckoning is brutal in its unexpectedness.
Crudup has the most gaps to fill because his character has the most to convey in the least amount of words. If only for his impeccably implosive performance, the hidden complexities of the triangle's tortured tale almost nears fruition. But he's constantly undermined by Tim Bevan's stubbornly laconic adaptation of Max Evans' novel. Not that The Hi-Lo Country is too cerebralized to be inaccessible. There is satisfaction to be discovered in the dwindling of one era to make way for the coming of another, as well as individuals who used fists instead of guns to settle most arguments. There is a romanticism in watching a man judged by the way he rides a horse or in the way beliefs are bound with patriotism or in the way a man is admired not in the fact that he fights but in who and how he fights; that a man who loves from afar cannot see how he himself is strongly loved by a woman who believes herself more than a consolation prize; that a natural born hellion can be tamed by a woman for whom the term wife is but a four letter word.
The Hi-Lo Country
Directed by: Stephen Frears
Written by: Walon Green; adapted from the novel by Max Evans
Starring: Woody Harrelson, Billy Crudup, Patricia Arquette, Penélope Cruz, Sam Elliott, Cole Hauser, John Diehl
