The Jack Bull
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The Jack Bull (1999) is a made for television western, produced for HBO, and directed by John Badham. The film is loosely based on Michael Kohlhaas, a novel by Heinrich von Kleist.
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[edit] Plot summary
The Jack Bull tells the story of Myrl Redding (John Cusack), a Wyoming horse trader who clashes with Henry Ballard (L.Q. Jones), a fellow rancher, after Ballard abuses two of Myrl's horses and their Crow Indian caretaker, Billy (Rodney A. Grant). When a local judge throws out Myrl's complaint, the war he wages to force Ballard to nurse the emaciated animals back to health escalates into a vigilante manhunt, murder, and the possible defeat of Wyoming's bid for statehood.
[edit] Cast
- John Cusack - Myrl Redding
- John Goodman - Judge Tolliver
- L.Q. Jones - Henry Ballard
- Miranda Otto - Cora Redding
- John C. McGinley - Woody
- Rodney A. Grant - Billy
- Kurt Fuller - Conrad
- Rex Linn - Shelby Dykes
- Drake Bell - Cage Redding
- Scott Wilson - Governor
- Dick Cusack - Jury Foreman
[edit] Impact
The Jack Bull is part of a new breed of Western films, standing alongside Dances With Wolves and The Unforgiven, which turn traditional conventions on their heads. These films feature grittier, more realistic worlds where the characters are no longer black and white, but various shades of gray. Most often they portray the individual competing in some way with the surrounding civilization.
These films often feature a form of antihero. The antihero does good on a personal mission, stands up for individual freedoms, justice, or morality, but often stands at odds to his country, legal system, political reality, or the times in which he lives. They show a crusading individual who must operate outside the law when the power structure of the day is corrupt and the legal system is not valid. This form of protagonist often wins the day, usually via some form of vigilante action, but is not rewarded in the end. In a way, this form of film shows a win-win, lose-lose scenario, where the protagonist defeats the antagonist, but then then protagonist often falls victim to the antagonistic civilization as a whole.
The new types of films have transformed and many critics say revived and made more powerful the entire Western genre. The Jack Bull is an excellent example and a minor Western classic.
[edit] Trivia
- Bob Dylan's Ring Them Bells is prominently featured at the end.
- Much of the movie was filmed at Heritage Park Historical Village in Calgary, Alberta.
[edit] External links
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