"Woodrow don't know why he likes to fight. He don't know why he hit that general and got himself whipped raw. Shad didn't know why he wandered. He was just a wandering man. But Woodrow, he's a fighter." - Patricia Childress as Matilda Jane "Mattie" Roberts
Dead Man's Walk DVD Review
By Jonathan Boudreaux
At the end of Streets of Laredo, the miniseries based on Larry McMurtry's sequel to his best selling novel Lonesome Dove, the series' hero, Woodrow F. Call, was left a crippled old man. McMurtry was not through exploring the character, however, so in 1995 he published a prequel, Dead Man's Walk, which explored the early years of both Call and his best friend, Augustus McCrae. A miniseries based on the novel quickly followed in May of 1996, this time jumping networks to ABC.
The story unfolds in the Republic of Texas in the early 1840s. New Mexico is still a Mexican territory, albeit one coveted by its independent neighbor to the east. The ensuing conflicts are made more complicated by American Indians who fight both parties in a last ditch attempt to save the land that they consider their own.
Woodrow Call (Jonny Lee Miller) and Gus McCrae (David Arquette) are rookie Texas Rangers barely out of their teens. Under the leadership of Major Randall Chevallie (Brian Dennehy), the boys are on a mission to find a road between San Antonio and El Paso. Theirs is a ragtag bunch, including one-eyed Johnny Carthage (Tim Blake Nelson), his partner Long Bill Coleman (Ray McKinnon), and snapping turtle 'rassling whore "Mattie" Roberts (Patricia Childress). Lending the party a much-needed dose of expert help are guides Bigfoot Wallace (Keith Carradine) and Shadrach (Harry Dean Stanton), a plainsman whose coonskin cap is more coonskin than cap. After a deadly confrontation with Buffalo Hump (Eric Schweig), a Comanche who raids Mexican villages to kidnap women and children to sell into slavery, the party retreats to Austin.
In Austin, Gus convinces Woodrow that they should join the Great Texas-Santa Fe Expedition. Led by a former high seas pirate, Colonel Caleb Cobb (F. Murray Abraham), the expedition aims to capture Santa Fe from Mexico. Gus believes that Santa Fe is practically made of gold, but he soon regrets enlisting in the expedition when he meets Clara Forsythe (future Alias star Jennifer Garner), the flirtatious daughter of a general store proprietor. Gus is instantly smitten, promising Clara that he will be back to ask for her hand. Call, too, meets someone special in Maggie (Gretchen Mol), a tender-hearted prostitute, but unlike his ebullient comrade, Call suppresses his feelings.
Soon the expedition begins, but due to Colonel Cobb's arrogance and their guides' incompetence, thing go terribly awry. They find themselves hopelessly off course, their horses are stolen, and people start to desert by the dozens. Things get even worse when they encounter General Salazar of the Mexican army (Edward James Olmos) who takes the members of the expedition prisoner and forces them on the Dead Man's Walk - hundreds of miles through the waterless desert country of Apache territory to the Mexican outpost of San Lazaro, where an unknown fate awaits those who survive.
Filled with black humor (like an early scene where Wallace and Shadrach relate a grisly tale of suicide and torture while the others try to eat breakfast), Dead Man's Walk is lazily episodic in a fun, picaresque way. Watching it helps to delineate exactly what its predecessor, Streets of Laredo, was missing: real human interaction. Walk is often content to stop the action and focus on quiet conversation. This attention to characterization allows us to care about the characters in a way that Laredo could not.
This is aided by an unusually strong and cohesive cast. David Arquette, mostly know for his comedic roles and his once ubiquitous AT&T commercials, is an oddly appropriate choice to play Gus. He brings a perfect sense of goofy hubris to the role. Jonny Lee Miller provides an interesting take on a Woodrow Call who had not yet completely sealed himself off from the world.
As Colonel Cobb, F. Murray Abraham is flamboyantly eccentric and always interesting to watch. Not many actors could perform with a talking parrot clinging to their shoulders and still command attention, but Abraham is not to be upstaged. Keith Carradine and Harry Dean Stanton also provide memorably vivid performances.
One problem with prequels is that the stakes are somewhat lower because we already know that certain characters are essentially safe from harm. Walk partially solves this by bringing other characters to the fore, almost rendering Gus and Call supporting characters. Even so, Walk is probably best watched after watching Lonesome Dove. Part of the joy of watching Walk is in discovering how the past helped to form characters we are already familiar with. Certain scenes, like the miniseries' final haunting images of Call and Maggie, would not have the same resonance if watched before Lonesome Dove.
McMurtry continued the story of Gus and Call with Comanche Moon, a novel set in the years between Dead Man's Walk and Lonesome Dove. As of yet, Comanche Moon remains unfilmed.
The miniseries is spread over two DVDs. The miniseries is divided into chapters, but it suffers a problem similar to one found on the DVD of Return to Lonesome Dove. An insert in the keepcase lists the chapter names. According to the insert, disc two begins with chapter twenty-one, but this is only useful if the viewer plans on using the scene selection screen. Those who instead choose to simply skip ahead using their remote will have to figure out how the actual DVD chapters correspond with those listed in the insert. Like Return, all of the interior opening and closing credits have also been deleted. By leaving in the closing and opening credits, the producers of the DVD would have provided natural stopping points for viewers. Even stranger is the fact that all of the closing credits are actually included separately on the DVD - they can be accessed through a special menu found off of the scene selection screen.
