Robert Davi plays real life baddie William Quantrill who kills the family of John Golden (Jeff Osterhage). Golden himself is left for dead in a river. After this Golden looks to exact revenge upon Quantrill. He comes across J.R. Swackhammer wonderfully played by Hal Holbrook who trains Golden. The film gets good when Holbrook shows up and starts to take on a nice flavour. This is a TV movie so it is not going to play out like Clint Eastwood's 'The Outlaw Josey Wales' with its subject matter, but might work well if you have kids in the 10-14 range who like a western. Also starring Keir Dullea as the over confident General Custer and great veteran R.G. Armstrong as corrupt Judge Harrison Harding. As you might have guessed through out the film Golden meets real life legends from the Old West.
Now this TV movie is far from perfect and a couple of big things for me that didn't work were early on we are shown a scene that oozes cheesiness to me. We watch John Golden in slow motion ride his horse Moonbeam, which he is singing a song about. I thought this was completely unneeded as within a couple minutes Osterhage's acting should be able to bring his love through toward the horse. The other is the music in a couple of scenes does not really have a western feeling. It is more of a 1979 or disco-influenced theme and any seriousness in the scenes are washed away. In turn though well worth a watch. On a side note Harve Bennett was executive producer who went on to produce and co-write Star Trek II through V.
Now this TV movie is far from perfect and a couple of big things for me that didn't work were early on we are shown a scene that oozes cheesiness to me. We watch John Golden in slow motion ride his horse Moonbeam, which he is singing a song about. I thought this was completely unneeded as within a couple minutes Osterhage's acting should be able to bring his love through toward the horse. The other is the music in a couple of scenes does not really have a western feeling. It is more of a 1979 or disco-influenced theme and any seriousness in the scenes are washed away. In turn though well worth a watch. On a side note Harve Bennett was executive producer who went on to produce and co-write Star Trek II through V.