Larry McMurtry is back in the saddle again, with yet another TV miniseries based on one of his Lonesome Dove books. The newest chapter of life, love, death, and horses in the dusty old west is Comanche Moon, and the six-hour tale will air on CBS over three nights starting at 9 p.m. Sunday.
Parts 2 and 3 will be shown at the same time on Tuesday and Wednesday.
McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Lonesome Dove, was made into a hugely successful 1989 miniseries, which is now considered a classic. Starring Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones, the four-parter won several Emmys and was credited with almost single-handedly revitalizing the western genre and leading the way for such theatrical films as Tombstone, Unforgiven, 3:10 to Yuma, and Brokeback Mountain (for which McMurtry wrote the screenplay).
Comanche Moon is a prequel to Lonesome Dove and follows the time frame of yet another McMurtry miniseries, ABC's Dead Man's Walk (1996). This one picks up with the adventures of a pair of veteran Texas Rangers, Augustus "Gus" McRae and Woodrow F. Call, the same two cowboys portrayed as crusty old men in the original miniseries by Duvall and Jones, respectively.
This time around, Gus - a scruffy, headstrong romantic - is played by Steve Zahn (Rescue Dawn), and Woodrow - a taciturn loner but a loyal friend - is portrayed by Karl Urban (Doom, the Lord of the Rings movies). The marquee names in the cast are Val Kilmer (Batman Forever) and Rachel Griffiths (Brothers & Sisters, Six Feet Under). Neither has a leading role, but both make the most of the screen time they do have.
Kilmer plays Capt. Inish Scull, an intense military officer who delights in taking on "felonious foes" and ends up falling into the hands of brutish Mexican bandits and needing rescue by Gus and Woodrow. Griffiths, meanwhile, plays Scull's thoroughly despicable wife, Inez (that's right, they're Inish and Inez), a cruel and arrogant woman who fills the time during her husband's absences by trying to seduce half the men in the frontier town of Austin, Texas.
The series chronicles the bloody struggle in the mid-1800s to defend the advancing western frontier against defiant Comanches, who are determined to protect their territory from further encroachment by the white man. Wes Studi plays the Comanche leader Buffalo Hump and Adam Beach is his outcast son, Blue Duck. (The pair have appeared together before, in PBS' Mystery series based on Tony Hillerman's stories about modern-day Navajo tribal policemen.)
Like Lonesome Dove, the story doesn't romanticize life in the old West but shows it as harsh, brutal, and subject to sudden explosions of violence. People can die at any time, layers of grit and dust cover nearly everything and everybody, and most of the men are more interested in women and whiskey than anything loftier.
In fact, with its graphic scenes of battle and torture and its fairly explicit sex, Comanche Moon isn't suitable at all for younger viewers.
Both Gus and Woodrow are lucky enough to have special women in their lives - Gus fancies a spunky shopgirl named Clara (Linda Cardellini, ER), while Woodrow, in his own silent way, has a little something going with the town prostitute, Maggie (Elizabeth Banks, The 40-Year-Old Virgin). Neither of the women can bear waiting at home while their men are out chasing down renegade Indians or Mexican bandits, but they have little choice.
Like any good western, this one is filled with wide-ranging shots of a beautiful but desolate West. Though the series is supposed to be set in Texas, it was really shot in New Mexico, but viewers won't know the difference and the scenery is gorgeous nonetheless.
Cowboys being the notoriously tight-lipped bunch they are, Comanche Moon isn't exactly dense with dialogue, but there are occasional mem-isn't exactly dense with dialogue, but there are occasional mem-
orable exchanges, like this one, in which a group of barely literate Rangers is trying to determine exactly what a "genius" is:
"A genius is somebody with six toes on one foot," says one. "That's what I heard, anyway."
"A genius ain't got no warts," chips in another.
"In that case, I'm a genius," pipes up yet another one, " 'cause I'm rarely troubled with warts."
Finally, a small, uncertain voice offers an opinion: "I heard a genius is desperate smart."
No one seems to care much whether that's right or not, and the conversation eventually meanders on to more pertinent topics, like, well, women and whiskey.
The trouble with prequels is that they often have a hard time measuring up to the original movies, and it doesn't take a genius to see that's true in this case. Though Comanche Moon is from the same producer and director as Lonesome Dove, it can't help but suffer by comparison to the earlier miniseries. At times it's disjointed and slow-moving, and it could well have been shortened to two nights instead of three.
And while Zahn and Urban are mostly convincing in the lead roles, they're not exactly Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones.
Still, with the Hollywood writers' strike continuing to diminish prospects for quality TV programming at this point in the season, Comanche Moon is certainly several steps up from a reality show or a rerun. So if you're a McMurtry fan, or just like a good western yarn, saddle up, buckaroos, and enjoy the ride.
First Published January 11, 2008, 11:17 a.m.
