Quigley Down Under - 5 stars out of 5 stars

I wasn't a big Tom Selleck fan till this movie.Sometimes a role fits like a glove.This is such a role.Tom plays cowboy Matthew Quigley who answered a add from a Australian rancher Elliott Marston played by that great villain Alan Rickman but doesn't realize what the ad really was requesting.Quigley is a sort of reverse Crocodile Dundee but in a much more serious way in the true sense of good and evil in the old west.It seem Marston want the Ausie version of indians,aborginals, cleared from his land.Of course Quigley is no cold blooded killer and clashes with Marston and is left to die in the rough western like outback.Quigley had met a sort of crazy lady American when he landed and now reunites with her Crazy Cora played by Laura San Giacomo,whom we later learn was not as crazy by rather in a sort of shock induced refusal to accept reality because of a terrible deed she was involved in years before. When that deed is revealed it is moving and understandably powerful and we see her slowly begin to heal.But thats just another reason to see the movie.There is a star of another sort in the movie.Sort of a early sniper rifle called a Sharps rifle with a 34 inch long barrel, four more than normal. It has been modified to shoot a .45 caliber, 110 grain metal cartridge with a 540 grain paper patch bullet. It has a double set trigger and a Vernier sight marked up to 1200 yards, but "This one shoots a mite further."     according to Quigley.This makes him a very dangerous  foe to Marston as any soldiers reading this would gather.The film also delves into,in a around about way,the dirty secret that Australia  kept about their treatment of the aborginals up until 1971.In some ways if you examine THAT story it is maybe worse than americas slavery.But being white it's not my place to judge degrees of bad to blacks.Bad is bad.
Anyway,there is a OK corral sort of ending that is much better and just version of old west justice.If you like westerns and want just a touch of exotic enhancement,THIS is your film.
As usual trailer link below pix.The film runs 119 minutes and was released in 1990.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xebFl_liB1E