The Outsider (2002)

Rebecca Yoder (Naomi Watts) is widowed when a nearby rancher hangs her husband, upset because farmers and sheep herders are carving up the land on which his cattle used to graze.

Left alone with a young boy (Thomas Curtis as Benjo) to raise, she refuses to sell her farm to the cattleman and tries to postpone an inevitable marriage to another member of her strict religious sect, known as “The Plains.”

Members of “The Plains” aren’t allowed to indulge in music except in church. Women can’t wear their hair down, except when alone in the presence of their husbands.

Speaking of husbands, Rebecca’s brother-in-law Noah (Keith Carradine) quickly offers to take his brother’s place as hers.

Then a wounded gunman (Tim Daly as Johnny Gault) shows up on her doorstep. She nurses him to health, then hires him as a hand on her farm.

Slowly, the two become close. And Gault takes Benjo under his wing, teaching him to use a slingshot, if not a gun.

The cattlemen keep pushing The Plains, and Johnny proves effective in putting them in their place.

But The Plains aren’t ready to accept him as one of them, not as long as he wears a gun. And when he and Rebecca are caught in bed together, she’s exiled from the group.

But that doesn’t mean the hostilities with the rancher are over yet.

Review:

Neat little film with some original touches of humor in the early going, as Gault turns from gunman to sheepherder. At one point, Rebecca calls for help. He bursts into the barn, both six-guns at the ready. She simply laughs. She needs help with a sheep giving birth.

And this isn’t straight “The Angel and the Badman” because Rebecca is forced to go before her entire church and beg forgiveness for her sinful ways or face banishment.

Unfortunately, the ending doesn’t live up to the rest of the film. Rebecca is wounded, perhaps fatally in the final showdown.

“Your guns,” she whispers, on the verge of death. Johnny throws his bullets and his gun into the blacksmith’s forge. Benjo does the same with his slingshot. And Rebecca miraculously recovers.

That said, this is also a lovely looking film.

Directed by:
Randa Haines

Cast:
Tim Daly … Johnny Gault
Naomi Watts … Rebecca Yoder
Keith Carradine … Noah Weaver
David Carradine … Dr. Lucas Henry
Thomas Curtis … Benjo Yoder
Brett Tucker … Ben Yoder
Jason Clarke … Ray Childress
Grant Piro … Woodrow Wharton
Mick Roughan … Jarvis Kennedy
John Nobel … Fergus Hunter
Peter McCauley … Isaiah Miller
Aaron James Cash … Samuel Miller
Eamon Farren … Levi Miller
Kim Knuckey … Sheriff Getts

Runtime: 119 min.

Memorable lines:

Doc: “Pays to stay on the winning side, right, sheriff?”
Sheriff: “I don’t make the rules, Doc.”
Doc: “No, you just work for the man who does.”

Johnny Gault: “Do you never sin, Mrs. Yoder?”
Rebecca: “I don’t go out of my way to do it.”
Gault: “I do. Far, far out of my way.”

Rebecca Yoder: “How can we know what someone’s fate will be?”
Dr. Lucas Henry: “The powers of darkness sometimes do prevail.”

Cattleman Fergus Hunter: “Mr. Gault, what you don’t seem to understand is that I always win.”

Naomi Watts, inquiring about whether Johnny Gault will survive his wound in The Outsider (2002)

Thomas Curtis as Benjo Yoder, Rebecca’s young son, intrigued by the stranger Johnny Gault in The Outsider (2002)

Peter McCauley as Isaiah Miller, Rebecca Yoder’s father in The Outsider (2002)

Naomi Watts as Rebecca Yoder, forced to make difficult choices as she grows closer to an outsider in The Outsider (2002)