The Information On: `The Hi-Lo Country'

What Is It?

Stephen Frears' elegiac western, from a 1961 novel by Max Evans, about two ranchers returning from war and struggling to adapt to life in postwar America.

Who's In it?

Big Boy Matson (Woody Harrelson) and Pete Calder (Billy Crudup) are the two cowboys living in Hi-Lo, New Mexico, who drink, cattle drive, fight, fall for the same married woman (Patricia Arquette) and try desperately to cling on to the past.

What They Say About It

"While not actually dull, it never thrills the blood... Frears has done everything the genre requires, apart from the most crucial one of making us feel that we have been witness to some heartrending loss," Anthony Quinn, The Independent.

"The narrative drive sags a bit towards the final half-hour, but Harrelson swaggers and sneers and brawls and makes it look real, and Crudup has a tremendous severity, with that German-poster look Gary Cooper sometimes had," Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian.

"A treat to watch, as well as a tribute to the kind of movie that made this one possible," Andrew O'Hagan, The Daily Telegraph.

Where You Can See It

The Hi-Lo Country is on release.