A dramatization of the real-life Johnson County War in 1890 Wyoming, in which a sheriff born into wealth attempts to protect immigrant farmers from rich cattle interests.
The first critics to lay eyes on it mistook the emphasis on the personal and painterly for self-indulgence - static naval gazing. This confuses incident with the incidental.
For all the abuse heaped on it, this is -- in its complete version, at least -- a majestic and lovingly detailed Western which simultaneously celebrates and undermines the myth of the American frontier.
The balance of director Michael Cimino's film is so confusing, so overlong at three-and-a-half hours and so ponderous that it fails to work at almost every level.
