Cattle Annie and Little Britches

Robert Ward and David Eyre adapted Ward's fictionalized book about two true-life outlaw women who headed west from Oklahoma in the 1890s and attached themselves to the Doolin-Dalton gang, who had given up robbing trains and moved on to robbing banks. Undistinguished western has corny dialogue thick with purple prose and is blanketed with generic bluegrass music. Burt Lancaster as Bill Doolin faces off against Rod Steiger as vigilant U.S. marshal Bill Tilghman, and their combined charisma gives the movie whatever personality it has, the ladies of the title being negligible. As mercurial Annie, Amanda Plummer (in her film debut) has an eccentric quality that fails to engage the audience; with her mop of untamed hair, her wild eyes and wise-old-lady speaking voice, she's a human tumbleweed. It takes over an hour into the proceedings for Diane Lane's baby-faced Jenny to exhibit some sign of life; too modern for this scenario, it's easy to forget she's even in the picture. Lamont Johnson directed, erratically. Film improves in its second-half, but the tone of the movie is off. It has elegiac qualities that aren't used to bolster the narrative, which Johnson then drops entirely for a more standard, upbeat western-genre feel. *1/2 from ****