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Title: 'The Searchers' - lite
Review: Reading the premise you could be forgiven for thinking you were onto a winner here: Intriguing characters - sinister rogue Apache 'witch', tough independent frontier mother, estranged father who left to 'go native' - and a potentially engrossing story. But all ingredients sadly come to very little under Ron Howard's undercooked direction. Visually and dramatically the film compares very poorly in toughness, menace and visual power with 'The Searchers' on which it is clearly a riff, a decaffeinated, low-cal one at that.. Kate Blanchett gives a sturdy performance that deserved a better vehicle. Tommy Lee Jones by contrast looks ill-at-ease throughout. Of recent westerns, Kevin Costner's 'Open Range' takes up the reins of the tradition with far more satisfactory results.
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