Great acting/directing. Just a very hard subject in some very hard times. Wouldn't want to live it, so didn't really enjoy watching it. But the movie was extremely well done.

This is literally the worst movie I've ever seen. If you want to see babies and godly women dying, definitely watch this. Women are getting raped. Babies are thrown down the toilet. Horses are eaten. The only reasonable woman hangs herself. This movie is 2 hours of "shock value", and by that I mean desperate for attention, IQ lower than room temperature. I will say that this is the best I've ever seen Hilary Swank do. But I will actually never ever watch another movie by or starring Tommy Lee Jones. The old man just had to write in himself getting laid by a 20 something, before having her kill herself. He is just a sick, perverted old man looking for attention before he dies. Also, why do I have to write 10 lines? First time I've ever reviewed a movie, but this was so terrible I just had to.

Released in 2014 and directed by Tommy Lee Jones, "The Homesman" stars Hillary Swank as a single pious woman living on the Nebraskan prairie. After saving a drifter from the gallows (Jones) they team-up to escort three mentally ill women to Iowa. Can they survive the journey? The three crazy women are played by Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto and Sonja Richter. James Spader and Meryl Streep have glorified cameos.This is NOT a rousing Western in the least. It's a bleak portrayal of the hard life on the plains during the 1850s, similar in tone to 1972's "Bad Company" and 2015's "The Revenant, but without the latter's breathtaking mountain cinematography.The story's engaging despite the mandatory mundaneness, but it loses points for being so dismal and occasionally nigh shocking (you'll know what I mean), but it's not always downbeat. The movie's acutely realistic, but mixed with an almost surrealistic episode that takes away from the believability, but this can be overlooked on the grounds that what happens is a type of hellish perdition of the arrogant.The theme is the contrast of the primeval West and the civilized East. The West is so harsh that it drives some people mad and they must flee back East for succor. Survival in the West takes everything you have whereas the East is so comfortable that pompous pettiness manifests as a social staple (e.g. the women gossiping in the Iowa town). The Mississippi River (or Missouri River) is the separation point of the two worlds. See below for further commentary.I did find it hard to believe that Mary Bee (Swank) would have a hard time finding a husband. Sure, her face isn't conventionally beautiful, but she has a smoking body (and she ain't even my type).The movie runs 122 minutes and was shot in New Mexico and Lumpkin, Georgia.GRADE: Borderline B/B- (6.5/10 Stars) SUBTEXTUAL INSIGHTS *** SPOILER ALERT *** The ferry boat is a transition from West to East and explains Briggs transition from primitive carnal man to civilized man with a conscience when he crosses over. Notice that he doesn't do the same thing to the gambling house that rejects him that he did to the hotel when he was on the other side.The wooden tombstone he intends to put on Mary Bee's grave as he crosses back to the West is kicked overboard as a symbol that, in returning to the West, he was returning to his old self and would not continue with the idea to make Mary Bee's grave "proper," as she did for a stranger's child.Mary Bee was a strong woman, but she didn't belong in the West because she was too civilized with her strong Christian moral code; and that's why it ultimately killed her.

"The Homesman" is a drama that surprised me. It's a western too and quite loyal to some of its roots, but it's not a drama that just happens to be a western. Because it is a western, it finds ways to emphasize the story in a way that makes it so much stronger than it would be otherwise.How should I describe this one? It's a story about hardship and broken people. Almost every character that has any focus, is somehow broken. Some are visibly broken beyond the capacity to function, and this is indeed the main storyline: Mary Bee Cuddy is determined to help three broken, mentally ill women to get to a church far away, where they would receive better care. Some of these women are reluctant to go, some of them want to go, but none of them speak and all of them seem beyond help. Mary Bee Cuddy gets a lowlife who calls himself George Briggs to help her transport these women. The journey is long, dangerous and ultimately tells us more about these characters than any destination ever would.Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank) drives this movie forward. She is a good, hard-working, God-fearing and strong-willed woman. Not a ball-busting superficial Mary Sue, or a portrayal of what an "independent woman" means to many modern mainstream feminists, but a real character with depth, needs and weaknesses of her own. This seems to have upset people who only want female characters to validate their checklist politics and/or bitterness, but everyone else can see a layered, driven and a very central character. About Mary Bee Cuddy's character, I do like how simple the symbolism is around her. She has managed to survive by herself in a very hostile and unforgiving world. She prays, she tries her best and she wants to help people. But can she help herself? The irony of the story is this: Mary Bee Cuddy wants to care for these broken people and get them all to a safe place far away, while she needs that destination and care just as much. She's not visibly broken and she can certainly function, but in her own way she is a desperate person. Desperate for love, desperate for anything to validate her struggles, to make them mean something. Most of us can relate to this. In this movie, you will find how people break in different ways. Some people are ill and their minds are broken, some can't get over a personal tragedy, some people are broken by cruelty and constant hardships, some people are broken by their inability to accept the "holes" in their hearts or what they don't have. Some people are broken by their false sense of independence and strength that doesn't allow them to love or care for others. This movie is both nihilistic and hopeful, even though the darkness threatens to swallow the little glimmer of hope left. There is a contrast. We are shown plenty of cruel things and hopeless despair, but I felt it also had a wonderfully naive heart to it, somewhere under the dark layers. This movie demonstrates how we can make a difference when we carry someone else's burdens for them or even with them, although we can't force anyone to do the same for us. If there is a message in this movie, I think it's this: we can never know how far the ripples of our lives and good deeds go, and sometimes - whether we know it or not - we can inspire people, no matter how fruitless and desperate our efforts can seem to us. We see this effect in at least one of the characters."The Homesman" can seem like a movie without a point, a movie where the journey means more than the destination, but there is a point to it. At times it's subtle and other times it hammers things to your head, but it's still tonally intact and everything works in favor of the story. It doesn't end with a bang, and although I would've liked a stronger, more simple ending, it's still quite fitting in its own way.Hilary Swank is absolutely great in this, and she is the beating heart of the story. Tommy Lee Jones is great too, both in very different ways. The three crazy ladies are played by Miranda Otto, Grace Gummer and Sonja Richter. They are all good, and although their craziness can be seen as "movie craziness" instead of something absolutely real and subtle, their performances work nonetheless. Supporting cast is very good as well, featuring good performances from William Fichtner, Caroline Lagerfelt and more.This film is well shot, although you won't get many majestic scenery shots or anything else that's visually outstanding in itself. In fact, you don't even notice the camera most of the time. I like this approach in a character-driven story. Marco Beltrami composed a good score. At first it seems a little out of place (I'd blame the editing department for this), but it finds its place soon enough. It's nothing too grand, which again is fitting.Tommy Lee Jones directed and co-wrote this little gem. Thumbs up for the other writers too, and I might just check out the novel this movie is based on. "The Homesman" hit me like a ton of bricks. I didn't feel it at first, but it just refused to go away. Its narrative isn't as tight or obvious as in most crowd-pleasing movies, and it's certainly not an exciting action movie (like westerns often tend to be), but it cuts deep if you allow it. It's not a bad cut, even though it may feel bad at first. When it scars, you feel better about it.Recommended for lovers of character-driven drama, even those who don't normally like westerns. But most of all, recommended for broken hearts and minds.