FireFan To me, this movie makes a significant impression as it is being in our age of fewer western films because it plays realistically like an old authentic cowboy story used to be and supplies good scenery and props too. Jane, played by Natalie Portman, is convincing as an authentic woman of the frontier living on a tough untamed land where there is not much law and even less sympathy. Acting out of her bravery she is not invulnerable, yet she is believable as she perseveres through hard and traumatic times. Since she is striking out on her own, Jane gets caught up in several dangerous settings. The man acting as her former love plays great in a role where the two people need each other. The storyline could almost be seen as a love triangle plot with some twists. This film raises the audience's spirit as pertaining to the quality of Jane's character and her former fiancée's. It is a well done, recent cowboy saga reminiscent of some classic early westerns. The film has a good dose of action but one needs to understand the fill-in information flashbacks to appreciate it properly even though the plot is easy to grasp. One area of repulsion I felt in the film action though, was when the main bad guy was torturing a cowboy or farm hand to death in a semi-graphic episode of the movie. Even so, this show has a bittersweet ending overall and I recommend it to romance and western enthusiasts as well as older movie goers.

Peter Lorme Jane Got a Gun (2016) is an unremarkable yet somewhat entertaining Western. I usually will not mention the production processes behind movies, but this one has notoriously become an abysmal one. The original director dropped out, multiple stars came and went, and the entire release date was pushed back for two entire years. The whole situation would make it seem like this film is a hot mess, but it actually wasn't. It may not necessarily be a wholesome watch, but there are a surprising amount of redeemable qualities. The acting was really solid, the direction was firm, and some of the shots were breathtaking. Many parts felt flat, the action scenes were underwhelming and the plot was forgettable at best. I went in here expecting a strong female-based role, but even that fell flat. Though nothing here was truly terrible, there was nothing that drew me in. 'Jane Got a Gun' is truly run-of- the-mill, but the production disaster behind it should cement its place in cinema history.

Steve Mcmillan First off, I'm not a fan of this genre - it has to be a really good story-line to keep me watching a western! At the beginning of the movie I started to get that itchy feeling, that this was going to follow the same route and lose me by halfway. Instead, surprisingly, it had me hooked when Joel Edgerton's character, Dan Frost, made his entrance. The movie isn't anything that hasn't been done before, in one guise or another, there is nothing original about it, and yet it grew on me. The central characters were good ones and both Natalie Portman and Joel Edgerton were excellent, as was Ewan McGregor, as the requisite evil gang-leader, who amazingly, I hadn't even recognised until after the movie and I looked at the cast list - what a great job he did! The little twist at the end of the movie made it for me, but enough about that. This movie joins a select few Westerns in my collection and whether you are a fan of the genre or not, you will enjoy this.

tom-43722 I literally didn't recognize Ewan McGregor throughout the entire film. I didn't know which of the outlaws was John Bishop until I looked it up on the internet later. Sadly, that's not a compliment to Ewan's acting but simply a note of how much he's changed since Revenge of the Sith. He's a talented actor - I think he actually surpassed Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi - but John Bishop didn't stand out as a character. The only thing I can remember about him is that he never killed children. That showed a hint of honour, which is good, but apart from that, there was nothing notable about the character. I couldn't even tell which villain was which because on the back of my DVD case it said Ewan was playing a guy called Colin. I kept waiting for someone to call him Colin so that I could know that the guy playing him was one of the three greatest actors in the Star Wars prequels, the other two being Christopher Lee and Samuel L Jackson.As someone who actually liked the Star Wars prequels, even though I know they're flawed, I feel like Natalie Portman wasn't as good in this film. For example, when she found out that her daughter was presumed dead whilst Jane was a prostitute, she was way too over-the-top. Yes, I get it, Jane was upset that her daughter was presumed dead but good god, could she have opened her mouth any wider in that scene? When Padme found out about Anakin's crimes on Mustafar, she was just as distraught but she didn't look ridiculous. It doesn't help that the only reason Jane stood out at all in the film was because she was the only woman who had any real presence in the story. She wasn't a particularly interesting character.The flashbacks were annoying too and it's partially because of them that the plot was so incoherent. Half the time, I didn't know what the hell was going on and only managed to make sense of it by reading a summary on the internet.Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman have both done great work in the past, including Star Wars and I have no doubt that they will do great work in the future, but sadly I think this movie represents a low point in their careers.