After he is nearly shot to death by a band of outlaws, fur trader and reformed criminal Bill Hammond (Noah Emmerich) rides home to his wife Jane (Natalie Portman) and their daughter. As he lays bleeding, he warns her the dangerous mob will come again, so she enlists a reluctant guardian: Union hero and former lover Dan Frost (Joel Edgerton). Jane and the two men reflect on their complicated and painful shared history as they prepare for a last stand. The pulpily titled Jane Got a Gun is already infamous for its tortured road to the silver screen: Scottish art-house director Lynne Ramsay quit the production just a day or so before filming began amid legal and personal conflict, precipitating a litany of changes in front of and behind the camera. Later, original distributor Relativity imploded during post-production; as a result, the film was sold to the Weinstein Company and ambivalently scheduled for release during the January doldrums.

This unenviable lineage invites contrary readings: it is a bit mystifying why so many incredibly famous and talented people endured so much headache-inducing behind-the-scenes drama to realize what is ultimately a minor siege Western with inconsistent pacing and an overly tidy ending. There is no major (feminist, genre-upending) revisionism nor is it a particularly detailed exploration of love and life on the frontier. The prestige of the people involved and those almost involved (Ramsay, Michael Fassbender, Jude Law) indicated, at least to me, a more intricate, lyrical, and/or visceral experience on par with The Proposition, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, or the 2010 True Grit, but this was either never the case or myriad idiosyncrasies were smoothed along the way.

Having said this, honorable replacement director Gavin O'Connor has not made a bad film. Far from it. As a small-scale genre exercise, it delivers certain pleasures, including expansive, parched vistas; a degree of slowly burning suspense culminating in a well-executed set piece; and dynamic lead performances by Portman and a particularly charismatic and stout Edgerton, as well as a welcome dose of camp antagonism courtesy of an underutilized, but game Ewan McGregor.

B

This movie feels chopped to death and it's incredibly obvious there were a lot of tweaks in post-production. I don't think the flashbacks worked at all - they disrupted the flow of the movie completely. The main narrative is solid for the most part though this is incredibly small scale, which makes it kind of funny how much drama went on behind the scenes. A good portion of this movie is essentially a two-hander between Natalie Portman and Joel Edgerton. It's a somewhat enjoyable movie because both of them are great actors who share a believable chemistry, and on a technical level it's definitely polished and well-shot. But this could have been a lot better and more affecting. The ending is also cheesy and ties things up too nicely. B-

Jane Got a Gun

I was enjoying this up until the end. It was all going along fine, building up to what should have been an awesome finale. The flashbacks filling us in on the back story and turning the house into a fort like Home Alone; it's all good stuff, and it is creating a bubbling suspense. But it's as if the production ran out of money. It is such a rushed, hidden showdown, and in the dark too! I was quite disappointed. My interest levels hit 0 within seconds, despite liking other elements very much; it was well shot, nicely edited (the flashbacks were great), competently acted etc. The nighttime chat between Edgerton and Portman sort of kills the suspense, but if the proceeding showdown was good and in daylight, O'Connor could have recaptured its energy. There were no standout performances, but Ewan McGregor's character, John Bishop, needed to have more screen time - he could have done some nasty shit, but he wasn't given much to work with. Were we supposed to hate this man? I certainly didn't. I kept wanting him to overact. But it never came. Anyway, the film should have been 120 minutes or more, not the 98 minutes (incl. 7 minutes of credits) that was put together. Jane Got a Gun is a waste of a simple story, well-told.

B-

I watched this sometime in May and liked the setup and acting. The film falters in its end and there is no emotional or rooting for character when Jane "Got the Gun". Portman and McGregor were great in this. Edgerton plays himself mostly.

5/10

Yes, the film doesn't have a shift-change moment where Jane has had enough and "gets a gun". She pretty much gets her guns in the first 15 minutes of the film, and shoots someone in the head by the 17th minute. The film was edited so much and had changes of management so much that it's no wonder it doesn't feel like one vision or doesn't completely satisfy.

Plus, I am not sure if I like the title. I think it sounds almost too "street" for a Western. Not as bad as "Jane Gets a Cap in Her Ass", but it just doesn't sound authentic. Maybe it's just me.

It is a goofy title; not sure if it is more overtly referencing the musical Annie Get Your Gun or the Aerosmith song "Janie's Got a Gun."

Definitely Annie Get Your Gun. Though it didn't dawn on me until I just read your post.