Format: DVD from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.
Westerns are not my favorite genre of film. I respect them and when they’re good, they’re really good, but they still are very rarely my first choice of genre. I thought I was done with them, but I shouldn’t be terribly surprised that when the latest version of The List arrived that another Western popped up beyond Django Unchained. The Hired Hand is an unusual one, which is probably why it was added. It plays with many of the tropes of the genre, but does things through the odd point of view of Peter Fonda.
It’s a simple story. Harry Collings (Peter Fonda), Arch Harris (Warren Oates), and Dan Griffen (Robert Pratt) are three drifters. They’ve been on the trail a long time. Dan and Arch want to head to California. Harry decides that he’s had enough of this life and wants to go home. Home, as it turns out, is returning to the wife and child he abandoned years ago. Arch is planning to head to the coast with Dan, but in a flyspeck of a town, Dan shows up suddenly with a few bullets in him, courtesy of McVey (Severn Darden), who claims Dan was attacking his wife. Harry and Arch ride out, but not before they stop by McVey’s place and put a couple of bullets in his feet, crippling him.
