Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Natalie Portman, Joel Edgerton, Ewan McGregor, Noah Emmerich, Boyd Holbrook, Rodrigo Santoro, James Burnett, Sam Quinn, Maisie McMaster, Jenny Gabrielle, Alex Manette, Piper Sheets, Celia Kessler, Linda Martin.

It seems the old west is becoming more flavoursome once more, it certainly has had a lot of time to find its niche market again and thankfully move away from the tired and almost disgraceful, fetish like voyeurism of the 1950s and 60s in which generations of cinema goers were treated to the version of events that depicted the wars and slaughter of native Americans and their European invaders. The old west now seems to venture into more realistic territory and yet occasionally it can blow its own trumpet too hard and offer a film that just doesn’t fit in either camp; it is neither truly awful nor astonishingly good but nevertheless it still is a piece of artistic interpretation worth exploring.

Jane’s Got A Gun is one such film, it richly deserves to do well and be seen as a painstaking portrayal of how women were treated as second class citizens, in a way on a same ignorant level as the Native Americans, only to be good enough to be used and abused. It asks the audience to believe that a woman quite rightly can handle herself in the toughest of situations placed upon her by the violence of man. However, despite good intentions, it comes across in parts as too polished, too sleek and clean for the grime dust bowl that was New Mexico, too unsoiled to be anything other than a near white wash of history once more. Whilst Joel Edgerton come out of it with great applause, both Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman seem confused by the sterility of their roles.

The Old West, a place of endeavour, of hardship and dirt, feels at times too hygienic, cleansed and uncontaminated in Jane’s Got A Gun, the only hardship is wondering why all the major characters in the film, with the exception of Joel Edgerton’s Dan Frost look as though they still resemble someone who has walked off a catwalk or are at least not weather beaten.

The story had potential; it had the plausibility within its structure to be another Dances With Wolves, however it loses charm quite quickly and whilst it retains a sparkle of wanting to see the film through, the audience is left with no other choice but to lament on the hole that was left out, the story that could have been if they had been brave enough.

Jane’s Got A Gun doesn’t shoot with both barrels, it has a few rounds missing from its chamber and finds that because of this the expected result is nothing but hit and miss; a true shame but still more enlightening than sitting through several John Wayne films.

Ian D. Hall