the audience applauded

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Daniel Baldwin of the Long Island acting Baldwin brothers stars in this obvious pilot for a western series that never apparently was picked up by the networks. Had it been maybe a lot of loose ends left from this film would have been cleared up. There were certainly enough left in this film.In fact Baldwin only spent half the film in the title role, the bulk of the portrayal of Ned Blessling is done by young Sean Baca. I won't go into details the story has an old Ned Blessing recounting his life story from a jail cell awaiting execution. Presumably had additional films been made we would have learned more. What we found out was that he was separated from his father Chris Cooper by Comanchero bandits, then later reunited, becomes sheriff of their town as an adult. A rendezvous with childhood friend Julie Campbell in another town leaves him absent when a gang led by Jeff Kober robs the bank and leaves a bloody mess in the town.After that Baldwin leaves on a vengeance quest. It looked like an interesting concept for at least a mini-series, but as just a stand alone movie, too much is unanswered.

I bought this film as one of ten in a two-DVD set at a Wal-Mart dump bin for $5. Well, you get what you pay for. That, technically, made it 50 cents per movie but I bought the set for this one because the others were westerns you always see on real cheap DVDs. Anyway, this was made in 1992 and I was bitterly disappointed when the story ended very abruptly with no resolution, whatsoever, to the mystery created in the story or the finding of the bad-guy, etc. It just ended....well, I found out rapidly why, that as I had guessed, this was a pilot for a TV series and the series, I am sure, was supposed to eventually resolve all the unresolved in the pilot. Imagine how cheated I felt and how you will feel if you do buy this and watch it. DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY!! I might also add that the story is no where enjoyable enough otherwise to make up for the ending which cheats the viewer.

The woman had a baby out of wedlock and was abandoned by the father Anthony Blessing. The photograph in his watch is the woman and baby he rejected and left behind. Some years later, Anthony Blessing returns realizing he loves her. But too late her family insisted she give the baby away to the Buckner family in another town to avoid disgrace. He looks at the picture with regret and love. The couple marry and have a second son, Ned. However, the memory of her first son haunts her. The betrayal eats away at her until she remarries someone else. The watch his mother gave to his father with their picture in it had a musical tune. The mother showed it to Tors on one of her secret visits at the Buckner family's home.

This is an augmented television pilot, not advertised as being so, with an abrupt ending distressing to a viewer who might be so unfortunate as to still be watching a production insulting to any with a modicum of intelligence, due to a storyline that makes no pretense at logic, rather instead stringing together a structure of episodes each more foolish than that preceding, with essentially no sense of continuity. It would seem that the primary purpose of this affair is to demonstrate the costuming talents of Michael Boyd, whose work is often very effective, but here only grotesque, as surely never were denizens of the Old West so brightly raimented in such an array of heterogeneous colours, with all garments seemingly impervious to even a scantling of soil. Director Peter Werner ("We Were The Mulvaneys") and scriptor William Witliff ("Country"; "Barbarosa") are accomplished craftsmen and it is difficult to accept this clichéd and terminally stupid composition as handiwork from either, a possible explanation being preparation and production interference for what purportedly became a popular television series based upon the lead character from this film, Ned Blessing (Stephen Baldwin). There is innovative camerawork, crisp editing, and some fine players earning credit for their skill at delivering their lines with straight face, but the plot provides nothing in the way of character development or plausible motivation, yet offers perhaps the most protracted and cartoonish scene of meaningless violence ever shot.