Day of the Gun (2013)

This is the story — told flashback style by a former newspaper editor — of two families who ran cattle ranches near Single Tree, Montana, a town that flourished for more than 25 years, largely because of the nearby mines.

Maggie Carter (LaDon Hart Hall) is trying to run one of those ranches after the death of her well-respected husband. She has a son named Ned (Sam Lukowski) who hasn’t exactly found his purpose in life, other than spending more time than his mother would like in the bed of a whore named Georgia Lamb.

And Maggie has a daughter named Kate (Erin Heilman), fresh back from school in the East. Kate’s decided not to marry her well-off boyfriend; a rancher’s son named Cy McCall (Jason Brown) has caught her eye.

The McCalls are the other family. Patriarch Cyrus has one of the biggest ranches around. But someone has been rustling cattle from the Big Sky Ranch. And Cyrus decides barbed wire might be a way to stop the stealing, even if it inconveniences his neighbors.

Most inconvenienced of all are the Carters. Maggie promises there will be “hell to pay” over those fences. But that’s not the only fuss between the families.

Ned and Cy had a falling out over a young girl years earlier; somehow Ned wound up with a nasty scar on his face. And when Cy tries to “clear the air” with Ned -– well, the bad blood between the families only gets worse.

Review:

For starters, the town scenes look about as authentic as you could expect for a Western about Montana that was shot in Jessup, Md., which is to say not very authentic. Those scenes make the film look like it was shot in a well-scrubbed tourist trap filled with folks playing Wild West in period costumes.

As for the cast, Eric Roberts is the big name here, but doesn’t show up until the last 15 minutes or so of the film. The three young leads – Heilman, Brown and Lukowski – do a decent job, though Heilman is given some incredibly stilted lines to try to pull off. Beyond that, most of the oldsters are so stiff in front of the camera, they have no business being in front of a camera.

But let’s remember, this is a low-budget Western with a pretty large cast. Not everyone’s going to be a film veteran.

The film’s big problem is a lack of focus. The storyline meanders from one subplot to another. Is it a story about family’s feuding over the fencing of cattle land? Is it supposed to be a story about the cattle ranchers struggling to stop rustlers? Is it supposed to be a story about boyhood friends who turn on one another? Is it supposed to be a story about star-crossed lovers from feuding families?

Heck, at one point, Maggie’s long-lost brother-in-law shows up with a deed giving his possession of half of the ranch. He’s dispatched of quickly in a subplot that has no bearing on anything else that happens in the film.

And if you aren’t scratching your head by the time the climax comes … well, you’re sure to be shaking your head as you watch it unfold, as most of the remaining stars of the film gather atop a very obviously computer generated rocky summit called Eagle’s Nest.

Directed by:
Wayne Shipley

Cast:
LaDon Hart Hall … Maggie Carter
Jim Osborn … Cyrus McCall
Jason Brown … Cy McCall
Sam Lukowski … Ned Carter
Erin Heilman … Kate Carter
Susan Osborn … Rachel McCall
Eric Roberts … Abraham Tanner
Raw Leiba … Charlie Broken Hand
Brian St. August … Simon Doubleday
John C. Bailey … Caleb Earl Bateman
Richard Cutting … Joshua Carter
Johnny Alonso … The Mortician
Jonathan Ruckman … Frederick Lydecker
Jim Holland … Sheriff Matthew McKenna
Connie Lamothe … Georgia Lamb

Runtime: 128 min.

Memorable lines:

Newspaperman Simon Doubleday: “Other people’s business is my business, Cyrus”
Cyrus McCall: “McCall’s business ain’t nobody’s business.”

Ned Carter to his mother Maggie: “What’s real to you died 30 years ago.”

Maggie Carter: “Mark my word. That wire comes down. Or there will be hell to pay.”

Bateman to one of his men: “You get right behind that door and shoot the first thing that isn’t me.”

Doc: “Cyrus McCall, you’re the luckiest man I’ve ever carved on. If you were human, we’d all be just about over your sudden demise by now.”
Cyrus McCall: “You’ll just have to postpone your burial celebration.”

Cy McCall: “War paint’s a bit much, ain’t it?”
Charlie Broken Hand: “Scares the hell out of white eyes.”

John C. Bailey as Caleb Earle Bateman, the man behind the rustling in Day of the Gun (2013)

Susan Osborn as Rachel McCall, wife of cattle king Cyrus McCall in Day of the Gun (2013)