TV Reviews : Bergman Rides the Range on USA

“Into the Badlands,” which features a grinning Bruce Dern as a quirky bounty hunter (USA cable tonight at 9), looks like a Western directed by Ingmar Bergman. That’s not a compliment.

Dern, in his long black coat and shotgun curled like a scythe over his shoulder, is the Grim Reaper from “The Seventh Seal.” Ghosts and wolves materialize in the desolation and one love-smitten desperado (Dylan McDermott) is witness to his own death, like the old man in “Wild Strawberries.”

In trying to stylize and reinvent the Western--to make a fable out of a form that’s already part-fable to begin with--the movie becomes self-conscious and hokey. What redeems the movie to some degree is director Sam Pillsbury’s painterly eye (the movie was shot in Santa Fe), a quaint sense of humor (check out Dern’s homespun philosophy and his tattered parasol on his horse and buggy), and a pair of supporting turns by Mariel Hemingway as a gritty homesteader and Helen Hunt as a yearning barmaid at the Ben Hur Saloon.

A clue to the fragmented structure and loose joints may be the half-dozen credited writers(scenarists Dick Beebe, Marjorie David and Gordon Dawson adapting short stories by three other writers altogether).

It’s nice to see original Western movies with major stars creep back onto TV. A CBS old West saga, “Sarah, Plain and Tall,” and a TNT Western, “Conagher,” have recently revitalized the genre on television. But “Into the Badlands,” despite the wire-rimmed and white-haired Dern in his charmingly crazed mode, was a mistake--unless you like Swedish Westerns.