Went to see the new western Jane’s Got a Gun, a defend-the-homestead film starring Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor (among others) that has been summarily dumped in around 500 theaters with almost no marketing and years of development hell. The background of the movie shouldn’t matter but it is a reason I decided to see it instead of, say, 50 Shades of Black. And it’s a kind of slow-paced somewhat interesting film that doesn’t do much new (and has a bad and kind of inaccurate title).
Basic premise is that Jane (Portman) lives somewhere in the old west – her husband rides up to the house, shot all to hell by a gang that is hunting them. She grabs a gun and a black hat and rides out to find help and to buy some more guns and dynamite. The film flashes back a bunch to explain what’s going on in the present, the gang attacks the home, and a lot of guns and bombs go off.
It takes its sweet time to get to the action and the backstory is sometimes interesting but overall it takes too much kind of sluggish time to tell a pretty simple story. It’s not bad, but it’s not super-compelling either.
Score: 75