This film does not receive the recognition that it deserves. The cinematography is beyond excellent! The cast is great, the story line and script are superb, not to mention that this is a true story. I ask you, what's better than true history? I could watch this movie over and over again, and that's a rare thing for me. I could even watch it with no sound, because the scenery is so breathtaking, and the filming is the best I've seen.The story begins around the turn of the century, late 1800s. Things were coming to a change, but this is a story of a real horse drive. Along the way, many challenges arise that make this movie a gripping surprise that keeps your interest along the way. You can almost feel the cool water of the Snake River when the travelers dip their feet, or feel their anxiety when they run across foes on the trail. For anyone who is hungry for a good western, and has not yet seen this production, I highly recommend it. It doesn't get any better!

In 1898 San Francisco Chinatown, a group of young Chinese girls are brought in as slaves to used for prostitution in the wild west. Capt. Billy Fender buys 5 girls to sell in Idaho. Prent Ritter (Robert Duvall) tells his estranged nephew Tom Harte (Thomas Haden Church) that Prent's sister and Tom's mother died leaving everything to Prent. Prent plans to buy 500 horses and drive them from Oregon to Sheridan, Wyoming to sell to the British Army. He offers Tom a large portion of the profits. The crew encounters Fender and the girls. After letting him join them on the trail, Fender steals from them. Tom tracks him down and hangs him. They become reluctant guardians of five Chinese girls. When they go into Cariboo City, Idaho, Big Rump Kate wants the girls that she already paid off. They escape with Lung Hay and Nola Johns (Greta Scacchi).This is a nice little old-west epic. The start is a little slow. The three hour mini-series probably has a bit of filler in it. I really like the girls struggling to understand the language and their new world. Duvall and Church are great as cowboys. It meanders a little and is a bit extended in certain sections. Nevertheless, it's a good TV mini-series western.

I am glad to discover recent westerns. There aren't many, and even fewer good ones that are pure westerns.So, I am sorry that this doesn't satisfy. Comparisons to Lonesome Dove are inevitable, so let's start there. The good news first: Gus McCrae is back. His character is written in a significantly different direction, but Duvall plays him with the same air of country wisdom, and many of the same mannerisms. The dilemma he faces is the same as Gus: can he settle down? or is he going to drift out into nothing?The plot is also about a drive through barren, hostile plains—horses instead of cattle. Thomas Haden Church plays a Woodrow Call character of sorts, brooding by counterpoint to Duvall's jovial Gus, a man of few words and similarly hurt by a woman in his past—his mother instead of a girlfriend.Here's where it goes off. Lonesome is of course twice the length, so we form deeper bonds inside the world of the film. That's not the issue here. That project was cinematic in the vein of Hawks—it was filmed in a smooth way, had flow, the narrative was seemingly straightforward but layered, the journey was your own.This is filmed in that syncopated way of TV. There are hundreds of unnecessary edits that kill any sense of flow and give the film an overprocessed, inorganic feel. The film is, as was Lonesome, anchored in women. The group here escort a bunch of Chinese girls—rescued from a miserable life of prostitution—and along the way pick up a prostitute whose best years are behind her. You can imagine her if you will as how Diane Lane's Lonesome character would end up if she had withered away in Texas.The idea in both Lonesome and this is that we float on a cold journey while being tethered to the women and what they represent, home, love, memory. The world of duty and adventure pulls hard enough that the tethers may snap at any moment, this creates all the tension in the orbit.The deeper narrative issue is that none of these women are sketched with any depth, they are stock characters. In Lonesome we had Anjelica's strong, solitary beacon in the cosmic middle. Here we just have a prostitute with a heart of gold. Church's relationship with the Chinese girl is stock movie romance.So when it gets emotional in the end it just smatters on the surface. Which wastes Duvall acting his ass out in the scene where he describes what the film has failed to provide—deep connection between souls. You can tell that even in his 70's, Duvall is still moved in his life by love. Not so whoever wrote this.So this is emotional but not born from passion, which is all the difference.

Robert Duvall will eventually go down as one of the all time great movie cowboys, even though he starred in only three westerns, and appeared in support in a handful of others.The three that he starred include the greatest western film of all time, Lonesome Dove, and two excellent examples of the genre, Open Range and Broken Trail. Broken Trail isn't quite up to Open Range, but it's close. Duvall and Thomas Haydn Church drive 500 hundred horses across the upper northwest, accompanied by another cowhand, 5 young Chinese women , a elderly Chinese man, and a bedraggled and dis spirited prostitute. How they come to the company of these other characters is the meat and potatoes of the movie, and it is kept interesting by a simple but catchy script that is in Duvall and Church's wheelhouse as actors. Both men won Emmy awards for their outstanding performances.This isn't really an action movie, but there is enough of it over the course of three hours to satisfy that niche, and a matter of fact portrayal of the brutality of the lawless frontier life that makes one appreciate the accomplishments of these unique people.