Johnson County War (2002)

• Year: 2002
• Released: 24 Aug 2002
• Country: Germany, United States
• Adwords: 1 nomination
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0280264/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/johnson_county_war
• Metacritics:
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: English
• MPA Rating: TV-14
• Genre: Drama, Western
• Runtime: 240 min
• Writer: Frederick Manfred, Larry McMurtry, Diana Ossana
• Director: David S. Cass Sr.
• Cast: Tom Berenger, Luke Perry, Burt Reynolds
• Keywords: tv movie,

	6.6/10
	48% – Critics
	48% – Audience

Johnson County War Storyline

This is a based on true events ” The Johnson County War, also known as the War on Powder River and the Wyoming Range War, was a range conflict that took place in Johnson County, Wyoming from 1889 to 1893. The conflict began when cattle companies started ruthlessly persecuting alleged rustlers in the area, many of whom were settlers who competed with them for land, livestock and water rights. As violence swelled between the large established ranchers and the smaller settlers in the state, it finally culminated in the Powder River Country when the ranchers hired gunmen to invade the county. The gunmen’s initial incursion in the territory aroused the small farmers and ranchers, as well as the state lawmen, and they formed a posse of 200 men that led to a grueling stand-off. The siege ended when the United States Cavalry on the orders of President Benjamin Harrison relieved the two forces, although further fighting persisted in the following months.”

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Johnson County War Movie Reviews

Entertaining but not accurate.

I enjoyed the movie for its entertainment value. But a movie titled The Johnson County War should endeavor to tell the story of its namesake. Especially since it is not a well known event and viewers are likely to accept the movie as historically accurate.

The basics are intact. The cattle barons declared war on the small ranchers over the issue of open range. The small ranchers were liberally declared rustlers in order to justify prosecuting them with extreme prejudice. A small army of mercenaries was hired to do the dirty work. Those familiar with the history of the Johnson County War know that a rancher named Nate Champion stood off the mercenary army in his cabin for a considerable length of time.

The movie takes that event and fictionalizes it with Tom Berenger’s Cain Hammett making that stand instead of Nate Champion. The details of that fight are fairly accurate. But Berenger’s character is fictitious, with subplots about brothers and spouses. It is not Nate Champion by another name. So it makes little sense to me to make a movie about a historical event and pretend that it happened to someone different. Kind of like Custer’s Last Stand with some fictitious guy named Clyde Smith as the leader of the Cavalry instead of Custer.

The movie makes for a good western. But Nate Champion’s story is entertaining in itself. Christopher Walken portrayed him in Heaven’s Gate, which is also about the Johnson County War. But in that movie, director Michael Cimino took the names of Jim Averill and Ella Watson, two small ranchers hanged early in the dispute, and assigned them to the Marshall portrayed by Kris Kristofferson and the prostitute portrayed by Isabelle Huppert.

The Johnson County War is a little known and interesting part of American history. Too bad that movie makers play so fast and loose with the facts.

Highly recommended

This is an expertly made TV western with a top notch cast.

A grandiose kind of story involving cattle ranchers and their feuds with cattle barons gets a first rate production and presentation from Hallmark. The cast is great, Tom Berenger terrific as always, Luke Perry surprisingly tolerable and a very feisty and evil Burt Reynolds looks smashing.

One of the better recent westerns to have come out in long while. Beats out most of these big budget Hollywood releases by a long shot. Highly recommended.

8 out of 10.

Surprisingly routine western from co-writer Larry McMurtry

I really wanted to like this film, with it’s strong cast, and a script co-written by Larry McMurtry, tackling the fascinating true story of the Johnson County War, where big ranchers and upstart smaller farmers engaged in one of the old west’s most infamous range wars. There has been numerous film versions of this range war, “Heaven’s Gate” being the most notable, but none have been great adaptation of the story. This film version boasts a strong cast that includes Tom Berenger, Burt Reynolds, Rachel Ward, and Michelle Forbes (there’s also Luke Perry), but I was mostly excited by the involvement of Pulitzer Prize winning author Larry McMurtry, who has previously written his own romanticized adaptations of other old west figures Billy the Kid, Calamity Jane, and Wild Bill Hicock. I was hoping this TV movie was going to have McMurtry’s same melancholy romanticized vision of the old west, but it sadly did not live up to his best adaptations (i.e. “Lonesome Dove” or even “Buffalo Girls”). The true story of the Johnson County War is not as clear cut as most films versions make it out to be. Usually the big ranchers are portrayed as the black hat villains trying to chase out the smaller rangers and farmers, playing into a familiar class warfare story of the powerful picking on the “little guy.” The truth of the situation was that the these little guys were actually stealing a significant amount of cattle from these larger rangers. In real life, both sides had legitimate grievances with the other and both sides had their own villains, which would have been an interesting story to tell, but this film does not tackle that. It instead follows the standard class warfare story, which if done well could have been an entertaining old west tale, but it ends up feeling like a pretty standard Ted Turner made-for-cable western. Douglas Milsome, who’s worked with the likes of Stanley Kubrick and Michael Mann (and also the horror movie version of Rumpelstiltskin), provides the film with some striking photography, but overall I found myself disappointed with what ends up being a routine oater.