Movie Review: 'The Jack Bull' (1999)

Fans of the Western will recognize Rawlins, Wyoming: It's yet another crooked frontier town where a decent man can't get a fair shake. In this case, wronged horse trader Myrl Redding (Cusack) goes vigilante and lands in front of a tough-but-fair Cheyenne magistrate (Goodman). In The Jack Bull, first shown last April, director John Badham (Saturday Night Fever) relies a bit too heavily on the genre's clichés (slo-mo footage of men on horseback, an Anglo whose friendship with a Native American signifies his virtue), but screenwriter Dick Cusack (the star's father) does eschew a happy ending, preferring to dispense justice that's more practical than poetic.