Its got a pretty face, one con man, a hardened marshal (Sam Elliot) and miscellaneous one-time deputies. Just another boilerplate western with very little creativity in the plot or anything else for that matter. What would Sam Elliot be without that unique voice who is better at voice overs, than anything else? (Beef, its whats for dinner) Lots of customary shootouts with people dropping from a spray of bullets. It gets five stars because its as mediocre as a movie can get. Not good and not bad. Here's the thing. I got a Sam Elliott "western collection" at a yard sale and this was the first of the three movies I watched. I'm going to read the reviews on the other two movies before wasting my time on another mediocre movie.

The Desperate Trail is directed and co-written by P. J. Pesce with Tom Abrams. It stars Sam Elliott, Craig Sheffer, Linda Fiorentino and Frank Whalley. Music is scored by Stephen Endelman and cinematography by Michael Bonvillain. Plot sees Fiorentino and Scheffer team up as wanted fugitives out on the lam, pursued by lawman Sam Elliott, who will so anything outside the law to get his way.The violence is loaded and film aspires to be a Leone and Peckinpah hybrid, so much so it would be easy for the casual Western viewer to believe they were witness to something special in the genre. Slow motion action and explosive blood squibs are the order of the day, throw in some genre staples and you are good to go. After a great opening, a false dawn if ever there was one, Pesce's (From Dusk Till Dawn 3/Sniper 3) picture suffers from bad direction, bad editing, awful musical scoring and the biggest problem of all, gross miscasting. Fiorentino, a fine actress and a fine looking woman, is no rooting tooting vengeance seeking blood spilling cowgirl, while Scheffer? Seriously? Who thought that was a good idea? And Endelman scores it like it's the bastard son of science fiction and Australia outback.Elliott is good value, he almost always is, but even he at times looks to be wondering just what he is doing in such poor fare. Bonvillain's photography holds up well, with some nice broad lensing of the Santa Fe and Tesuque Pueblo locations; with one gorgeous red sky shot particularly impressive, and the final shoot out is competently staged. But this is a bad Western film, even by TV movie standards. Cribbing from better movies and better film makers does not a good film make, case in point, The Desperate Trail. 3/10

Working class criminal Craig Sheffer teams up with escaped murderess Linda Fiorintino, who's better at killing than he is. Together they plot a bank robbery fall in love (sort of), and try to elude ruthless US Marshal Sam Elliott, the father of the man Fiorintino killed.A solid enough western, The Desperate Trail rides the early 90's wave of renewed interest in the genre, brought about by the success of Unforgiven and Dances With Wolves.This has enough blood, guts, and bullets to satisfy action fans, as well as good production values and performances, especially Elliott who's apparently as good at being nasty as he is at being folksy.My only problem is that despite the fact that the climax is action-packed, it stops just short of being satisfying.

This movie seems to have been written under the shade of Unforgiven - the beating of a woman justifies over a dozen murders. I didn't see it that way. Throughout the movie, my sympathy (unlike that of Mr. English who also reviewed this) was with the marshal (as rough as he was) in catching and hanging the murderer - and her partner. The movie was very well-done though - and a particularly wonderful and surprising beginning.Note the wonderful chimed music when things get most exciting. It's worth seeing. Linda Fiorentino is superb - and Elliott was born to play westerns - and does this wonderfully - with great restraint.