Jane Got a Gun

Jane (Natalie Portman) gasps when her husband, Bill Hammond (Noah Emmerich), slumps off his horse in front of their remote homestead. His back riddled with bullets, Bill manages to whisper that the notorious Bishop Boys are coming. The gang is searching the valley, looking to finish him off.

New Mexico Territory in 1871 is no place for a woman to defend her life and land alone. As Bill lies in bed half-paralyzed, Jane seeks out her former fiancé, Dan Frost (Joel Edgerton), whom she once assumed had died in the Civil War. Dan helps Jane set up defenses around her property and waits with her for the gang’s inevitable attack. But Dan’s got a grudge against the man who married his bride-to-be.

Wisely, the film doesn’t stoop to its title-suggested spectacle of a Lady Rambo blazing her way through the Wild West. The strong yet feminine Jane wields her shooting iron expertly, but with equal contentment kneads a lump of dough. The graceful Portman convincingly portrays a frontierswoman’s frayed resolve.

It’s Edgerton, though, whose gruff but fragile Dan commands the film’s focus. Like a solitary tumbleweed adrift on inhospitable terrain, Dan has seen war and lawlessness uproot his opportunities for happiness. “If a man loses purpose, that’s when he dies,” Dan says. The question is whether he’ll live up to Jane’s belief that “good people never turn bad.” (The R-rated Jane Got a Gun portrays plenty of bad, including violence, language, and prostitution.)

Well-timed flashbacks gradually and coherently connect Jane, Bill, and Dan to each other and to the gang hunting them. Happy memories in green meadows collide with the present’s dull browns. The film disappoints only in its supporting cast. The gang members, especially their leader (Ewan McGregor), come across as distracting caricatures.

Otherwise, the film realistically depicts a mournful era where stranger sizes up stranger for weakness and a population’s morals lie in shambles like dilapidated saloons. And like many Westerns, although not objectionably here, the film comes down to a final shootout.