Legends of the Fall (1994)

Directed by Edward Zwick. Starring Brad Pitt, Aidan Quinn, Anthony Hopkins, Julia Ormond, Henry Thomas, Gordon Tootoosis, Christina Pickles, Tantoo Cardinal, Paul Desmond, Karina Lombard, Robert Wisden, Kenneth Welsh, John Novak. [R]

Epic family soaper concerns a subversive father (Hopkins) in Montana, his three sons (Pitt, Quinn, Thomas), and a woman (Ormond) that serves as a romantic interest for each of the brothers. The story bloats and sprawls across the wide-open plains, tackling war, loyalty, family bonds, nature, the plight of Native Americans, Prohibition, and whatever else it feels like sweeping over; astonishingly, the film’s source material was merely a novella (by Jim Harrison). The film actually starts out on solid ground, with John Toll’s Oscar-winning photography capturing all the scenic grandeur of the remote wilderness (filmed north of Montana in Alberta and British Columbia), and the promising setup of swooning romantic rivalries among the brothers for Ormond’s affections, but the arrival of an overwrought death scene about forty-five minutes in (and the contrivances that led to its dramatization) signals that reality and tact are no longer in play—bring on the silly melodrama! Pitt solidifies his heartthrob status, but doesn’t get much to do besides echo his similar role from A River Runs Through It (a young Montana maverick who makes enemies with city folk…sounds familiar); Hopkins is almost as needlessly eccentric here as he was in Bram Stoker’s Dracula; Quinn is either too rigid or overtaken by histrionics; Ormond may be fetching, but her bland and indecisive personality is unworthy of such attention. Becomes positively dumb down the home stretch, with a ludicrously edited montage of revenge and a laughable final narration by Tootoosis. James Horner’s score is often used to smothering effect, and sounds pretty derivative of John Barry’s epics.

42/100