Shadow Riders, The

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Western month continues with a reissued, re-mastered (in HD) Sony Pictures version of "The Shadow Riders" (1982), a TV follow-up to "The Sackett's" (1979) which pairs Tom Selleck and Sam Elliott once again.

Those guys look as good in cowboy garb as any, but I have to admit that while I really liked this when it first aired on television, it's just a little too TV for me this time around. The music and musical cues are especially stock television riffs, so familiar that you have to wonder if they just recycled some of the old standards. Then too, the script is from old-time TV Western writer Jim Byrnes, who broke into television by crafting an episode of the old "Zane Grey Theater," graduated to an episode of "Lancer," then a few scant episodes of "Daniel Boone," "The Bounty Man," and "The Cowboys" before finding a home with "Gunsmoke." He cranked out 34 episodes for that classic show, but that's also the way this Louis L'Amour adaptation feels: cranked out.

The premise isn't exactly one of L'Amour's finest. The more you think about it, the more suspect it becomes. We meet Mac Traven (Selleck) in a room above a saloon, where he's sipping whiskey and sweet-talking a woman who attends to his needs. Mac wears a Union uniform. Then we quick-cut to a scruffy-looking Dal Traven (Elliott), who's rescued from a firing squad in a nick of time by fellow Confederates and flees right to the town where his brother just happens to be enjoying himself. So Mac is able to keep his brother from being hung because he's accused two men of horse-thievin' to a group of fellows who just happen to be their kin. Blood is thicker than water, you see, and in this movie more it's also more plentiful. Despite great distances and hordes of people, the Travens just happen to hook up with each other.

It gets worse when the boys get home and discover that a rogue Confederate who's decided not to acknowledge that the war is over (Geoffrey Lewis as Major Cooper Ashbury) has been raiding the homes and rounding up mostly women but inexplicably also the brother (Jeff Osterhage as Jesse) of the Travens. These Comancheros are planning to sell the women into prostitution and the man into silver mine slavery in Mexico in exchange for guns. Why they want guns remains a mystery, since the war is over. To perpetuate the circle of rounding up slaves and selling them for guns? Wouldn't these guys prefer gold?

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