I love that Tommy Lee Jones is carrying a torch for the western genre. He gave us “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada” nearly a decade ago and 10 years prior, his directorial debut was the TV movie “The Good Old Boys.” Now he's saddling back up (so to speak) with “The Homesman,” and like “Three Burials,” we can probably expect it to debut at Cannes next month.
The film, based on the novel by Glendon Swarthout (“The Shootist”), stars Jones as a claim jumper who teams up with a pioneer woman (Hilary Swank) to escort three insane women from Nebraska to a sanitarium in Iowa. During the unkind days of the Old West, souls and minds were broken aplenty. It's the kind of story you don't often hear about in the genre, which makes me excited to see what Jones has done with it. This looks to be a tale of a misfit making good, and it could certainly pop up during the awards season if it sticks the landing.
Swank also has the baity “You're Not You” coming later this year, which we told you about last week. Between the two projects, she, too, could be a mainstay on the upcoming awards circuit. But let's first see what these films have to deliver.
Check out the international trailer for “The Homesman” below, and watch for it to pop up on the Cannes announcement later this week.