I watched this film not because I came across a title called Tom Horn.I didn't know Tom Horn.I wasn't familiar with the director either.I watched this film because of McQueen,and I knew that this was almost his last film.While watching it I couldn't help making parallels between the personage of Tom Horn by the time that story happened and that of McQueen at the time the film was made. Two larger than life characters who have reached the end of the line. For the spectator who has seen McQueen as the unbeatable hero of The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape,watching him carrying the rifle ,tracking down the rustlers while catching his breath,running heavily,but yet never missing a target, is hard to accept.As the film also reaches its end,showing Horn getting arrested,his look gazed at the mountains afar through the bars of the jail window,his bright eyes,his calm face,you realize that this is not a defeat. The pale face,all that weakness and physical fragility works as transparent through which the inner light and strength of that mixture of Horn-McQueen comes out and shines.And when he steps up the stairs of his execution,what a forgiving smile at the face of the enemy,what a victory over death.A man who makes even dying look cool.

This is another one of those movies that I have vague memories of having seen when I was a kid. I probably did since my father always watched any western that was shown on TV. My vague memories also include not being too thrilled about this movie at the time and this is maybe not so surprising. After all this movie is quite sad and contains several plot elements that I really dislike: our hero is downright stupid, he is betrayed, journalist falsifies reality, lawyer with political ambitions gets hero sentenced, hero dies. All of it certainly not really my cup of tea.Now I could appreciate a movie like that if it was really well done but I do not think it was. The acting is pretty much standard Hollywood fare. That is, nothing to write home about. Sometimes the scenery in these Western movies can be really breathtaking but not really in this movie. The fights and shootouts are generally quite silly and not very well done. The story just plows on in a simple linear fashion towards the inevitable sad ending.What bugs me the most, apart from the crooked journalists and lawyers of course, are the fact that Tom Horn is downright stupid. He walks around in some country boy fog with a silly look on his face for most of the movie. He doesn't understand the fix he is in and he certainly do not cooperate in any way to get out of it. When he finally manages to escape jail, for a very short period of time, he barely walks out of town before he drops the jacket he stole, displaying a white shirt so that he can be spotted as easily as possible, and proceeds to run straight out onto the grassland without a hiding place in sight. That was just so stupid! No, this movie is definitely not my cup of tea.

This is an odd movie. It's a western, but also is like a film noir where few people, if any, do the right things and the usual Hollywood happy ending is non-existent. It almost leaves you depressed. In fact, it does. Yet, I was glad to have finally seen this movie, however, even if it was so long overdue, and think that many of the poor reviews (not here) are unjustified.This movie is SO Steve McQueen: a tough guy with few words, a likeble man ("Tom Horn,"the title character) who gets the job done no matter how tough the assignment; a guy the prettiest woman in town goes for and a man who gets respect of the other (good) men in town. However, unlike many of his roles, the last 20-30 minutes reveals a totally unique character, and one that is puzzling.Viewers of this would not be blamed for yelling at the screen, imploring "Tom" to "say something in your defense! Speak up!! Tell everyone you are innocent!"McQueen's "Horn" either is resigned to leaving the world perhaps the way he thought he should, with a shrug of his shoulders as if saying "that's the way it goes" or he's imitating Jesus Christ, who did similar when he spent his last day in kangaroo courts. He, too, wouldn't answer questions and state the obvious. To paraphrase McQueen in this story, it's like, "Hey, if you don't know who I am and what I'm all about I am by now, well....do what you gotta do."Anyway, much of the film is a good western, nicely photographed and uniquely low-key with McQueen hired by a bunch of ranchers (an "Association") to put a stop to all the rustling that has been going on in the area recently. He does just that. In fact, he apparently does his job TOO well.Depsite this being a quiet movie, the action scenes are quick and very violent. Yet, McQueen and many of his friends in here are so low-key it makes for a strange western....and oddly fascinating, I thought. A pity this isn't better known, especially since it was McQueen's second-to-last film before dying of cancer. He looks different, too. He doesn't look well and it must have taken some courage to make this film feeling as he did. Despite the haggard looks, underneath, it's the same old Steve.

I was so shocked by Steve McQueen's death, that I could not see this film during years. Tom Horn is an unusual western, a must for everyone who likes the genre. I must confess though that if I had not read some IMDb user comments and and also used Google to know more about Tom Horn the meaning of the film would have escaped me. It is hard to understand why Tom Horn does not defend himself and help his lawyer, but then this is the whole point of the film. Linda Evans is quite a presence, we don't see enough of her, McQueen has quite a performance in spite of being ill, and Richard Farnsworth and Slim Pickens are always a pleasure to see. It is almost as if the film borrows McQueen's style. Objective,tough, nothing is superfluous.