Broken Trail

With 16 Emmy nominations, Broken Trail, the AMC (US cable) network's first feature movie production, was way ahead of regular network products in the 2006 American TV season. It won for dramatic miniseries, male actor (Robert Duvall) and supporting actor (Thomas Haden Church).

Its director, Walter Hill, was experienced in Westerns and handsomely orchestrated more than three hours of lushly coloured cinematography of dramatic landscapes (mostly in Canada's Calgary), racing herds of wild horses, grisly gunfights (with brothel-serving evil henchmen), offbeat human interest stories (slave-trade Chinese girls), low-key romance (Duvall with Greta Scacchi as a prostitute widow), and inter-generational conflict (Duvall, a ranch-seeking uncle, bonding with Haden Church's footloose ranch-hand).

Writer Alan Geoffrion had worked as an assistant for Duvall on a 2003 Western (Kevin Costner's Open Range), but has no other IMDb credit. That's surprising as his debut work is a realistic portrait of America's West, warts and all including branding, mud, human trafficking and fast justice. The women's marital ambitions make sense in their harsh environment, where the men's bashfulness (and formalistic politeness to everyone, even foes) seems oddly but genuinely gallant.

Maybe there are too many cuts to shots of technicolor sunsets, flying horse manes and long grass, and perhaps the screenplay employs an over-sweet veil of decency for its odd couplings. They would explain why Hill and Geoffrion were both Emmy nominees but lost out to Prime Suspect: The Final Act.