08/16/2018 I suggest that you read the wiki bio of Josephine Monaghan and look at the images before watching this movie. It will make a difference if you do. The movie is perfection and the fact that it's based on a true to life woman makes it all the more special. I loved it and believe that you will too. Keep in mind that this is not a biography so the writer and director have creator license to alter the storyline or any other fact that they see fit. Bon Appetit

Viewers looking for a classic western risk to be disappointed by this movie. It's not that shotgun duels are missing completely, but this film is not about shotgun duels. Most disappointed will certainly be action movies fans if they happen to see this film, as the pace is slow and the emphasize is on something else. Director Maggie Greenwald focused here on the life of women in the West, and on the possibility of leading an alternative style of life during that period.The result is a different type of movie, different in subject, style and pace than you would expect. The title says it all maybe, the film is a ballad in the sense that it focuses on the hero - in this case a woman thrown out from her Eastern rich environment, running away, and choosing to live all her life in disguise as a man. Was this possible? Probably so, as the film is said to be inspired by a true story.There is some fine acting especially from Suzy Amis which sustains the film, and also a very closely and carefully rendition of details of the day-to-day life in the epoch. However this is not enough to maintain interest for the full duration of the two hours, some of the characters seem too remote and too hard to read missing the chance to involve the viewer in becoming interested in their destinies. Maybe the director kept intentionally the distance and did not want to reveal too much of their secrets, same as the folks around Little Jo did not push too much to be able to understand her real secret. The result is that a film which could shock and involve by presenting the continuity of the harsh realities of the status of women and other minorities all over the American history fails to do so completely.It is still worth watching, especially as the end brings at least part of that dose of sharpness and weirdness missing in much of the rest of the movie. I am however wondering where talents like director Maggie Greenwald and actress Suzy Amis disappeared in the fifteen years that passed since this film was released.

I really liked this film. I've been around enough real cowboys and stockmen to know that a woman could successfully masquerade as a slender, somewhat pretty young man. Especially if she deliberately gives herself a disfiguring scar (an old trick to discourage people from looking closely at your face). It was clear in the film that many of Jo's fellow miners and stockmen felt that she was a bit effeminate and, as Frank Badger puts it, "peculiar".But being peculiar wasn't a crime and a small man who kept to himself on a remote ranch, didn't bother other men, and made an honest living in the hardscrabble world of livestock ranching probably wouldn't have been subject to close scrutiny. Plus, Jo went armed and it was always dicey to make trouble for an armed man. And, once Jo has saved Frank's life and killed two ambushers, her status as a man would have been pretty well assured.I felt the final scene where Frank Badger is angrily smashing Jo's cabin furnishings was revelatory. I think Frank was angry that he never found out that his friend (for whom he had feelings he couldn't understand or acknowledge) was really a good-looking woman with whom he could have had a more intimate friendship without compromising his heterosexuality.

Driven to despair by the summer offerings on TV, I thought I had run out of options one night until I came across this gem on the Independent Film Channel. It's one of those films I probably wouldn't have walked around the block to see when (if?) it was in release. Don't listen to the nay-sayers, everything works in this movie. It reminded me a little of McCabe and Mrs. Miller in it's presentation and pace. Just sit back, power down, and enjoy.