This Brad Pitt vehicle seems likely to have been greenlit in the wake of Kevin Costner’s stunning Dances With Wolves. Aiming for a similar epic Western revisionist anti-hero result and adding the burgeoning star power of Brad Pitt backed with Anthony Hopkins as well as the fresh beauty of Julia Ormond, the execs at Columbia surely expected similar huge grosses and perhaps a few golden statuettes of their own.

Sadly Legends of the Fall (1994) was not in the same class as its model. Director Ed Zwick, still mainly known at this point for the hit TV series thirtysomething, was a bit too loose with his focus. Pitt’s Tristan had to contend with his father (Hopkins), compete with his two brothers (Aidan Quinn and Henry Thomas) for Ormand’s heart and disappears for a huge chunk of the second act after finding himself unable to deal with his feelings of responsibility for a tragedy that couldn’t, really, have been down to him at all.

This gets mixmastered by frequent narrations voiced by a native American elder and family friend (Gordon Tootoosis). Frankly, a movie that needs this much help explaining the on-screen action probably should have gone back to scriptwriters Susan Shilliday and Bill Witliff for another draft.

The acting is strong enough, though Quinn as usual does little for me, and the wide open territories in Montana where the  Ludlow clan have a ranch, the film’s primary setting, is awesome; that John Toll took the 1995 Oscar for Best Cinematography seem reasonable. Yet I wonder how much better Legends might have been if the younger brother and related subplots had been edited out.

recommended