"Gus.why not go up to Montana? It's a cattleman's paradise to hear Jake tell it." - Tommy Lee Jones as Woodrow F. Call
Lonesome Dove DVD Review
By Jonathan Boudreaux
When Motown executive Suzanne de Passe purchased the screen rights to Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove in 1985, the manuscript for the massive novel, which would not be published for several months, had to be hauled into her office on a dolly. At the time, she did not realize that every studio and network in town had already turned the novel down - westerns were too passé. Within a year, McMurtry's work had won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and had become a literary hit. This newfound pedigree swayed CBS, and the network agreed to buy a four night miniseries.
The miniseries stars Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones as Augustus "Gus" McCrae and "Captain" Woodrow F. Call, former Texas Rangers who have retired to a relatively sedentary life on their ranch in the sun bleached Texas town of Lonesome Dove. The two are the closest of friends but are polar opposites. Jovial Gus' mouth moves faster than his pet pigs chasing down tasty snakes. Call is taciturn and gruff, but immensely loyal. Gus is a slacker who prefers the company of the town whore, Lorena Wood (Diane Lane) to cattle. Call, on the other hand, is an impossible to please taskmaster who barely needs the company of other humans.
Filled with wanderlust and longing for the excitement of earlier times, Call decides that they should strike out for Montana to open the territory's first cattle ranch. Call is encouraged by their old pal and fellow Texas Ranger Jake Spoon (Robert Urich), a devil-may-care gambler, now on the run after a stray bullet he fired killed a dentist in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Gus thinks it is a mighty complicated idea, but reluctantly agrees as it will allow him to visit the love of his life, Clara Allen (Angelica Huston), now married to a horse breeder near Ogallala, Nebraska.
After a few midnight runs to Mexico, Gus and Call begin their trek to Montana with 2600 head of cattle, two pigs, and a ragtag group of cowboys. Dim but well meaning Pea Eye Parker (Tim Scott) might not be the smartest member of the outfit, but he is enormously trustworthy. Young Newt Dobbs (Ricky Schroder) is an orphan who is actually Call's unacknowledged son. Joshua Deets (Danny Glover) is their tracker and scout. Others include lovelorn Dish Boggett (D.B. Sweeney), hothead Jasper Fant (Barry Tubb), piano player Lippy Jones (William Sanderson), and Irish immigrant brothers Sean and Allan O'Brien (Bradley Gregg and Travis Swords). Even Lorena decides to come along, as ne'er-do-well Jake promises to take her to San Francisco.
Several other stories are followed concurrently. Ft. Smith Sheriff July Johnson (Chris Cooper), brother of the deceased dentist, heads out with his young son to bring Jake to justice. Johnson's pregnant wife Elmira (Glenne Headly) takes advantage of his absence to skip town in search of her first husband, eventually falling in with buffalo skin traders Big Zwey (Frederick Coffin) and Luke (Steve Buscemi). In turn, Deputy Roscoe Brown (Barry Corbin) must track down July Johnson to tell him of Elmira's leaving.
Lonesome Dove is a romance about the West, but a clear-eyed one. It finds beauty even in the dust, but acknowledges, for example, that even something so beautiful is, in the end, just dirt. Danger lurks around every corner, good people often die, and endings are usually bittersweet rather than happy. In this way, Lonesome Dove is not really a western at all, but a human drama like McMurtry's Terms of Endearment set on a larger canvas.
The acting is uniformly terrific. Robert Duvall's performance is heartbreaking. He infuses even throwaway lines with more life than most actors bring to an entire film. Call is a more distant character - people talk about him rather than to him - but Tommy Lee Jones turns what could have been a one dimensional character into a complex one. Their scenes together have such an easy going but rich camaraderie that had all six hours consisted of Duvall and Jones simply talking to each other, it probably would have still been an entertaining miniseries. All of their scenes hum with electricity.
The entire miniseries is well cast, even the minor roles. The cast is an excellent mix of old pros and future stars. If only there was an Emmy category for ensemble casting.
The miniseries premiered on February 4, 1989. CBS executives were worried that the expensive project would fail, but Lonesome Dove turned out to be a huge ratings success. It was such a hit that they eventually ordered three more Dove miniseries: Return to Lonesome Dove, Streets of Laredo, and Dead Man's Walk.
The four parts that make up Lonesome Dove are divided onto two discs. The discs are housed in an oversized keepcase. Each of the four parts is divided into twenty chapters. The menus make effective use of Basil Pouledouris' beautiful score. The extras features are divided between the two discs.
