Cusack as Nature’s Nobleman in ‘Jack Bull’

In the hands of director John Badham, “The Jack Bull” is a moral drama in genre drag, with an impressive physical sweep. A Canadian mountain vista, standing in for a swath of the American frontier, is referred to as “a church without a roof,” and it lives up to the description.

In the HBO movie, which premieres tonight, the underused actor John Cusack portrays Myrl Redding, a stubborn horse breeder in the Wyoming Territory who forms an army of paid vigilantes to redress what appears to be (to everyone but him) a minor grievance. The title refers to the behavior of the scrappy Jack Russell terrier, which supposedly never lets go once its teeth are embedded in your calf. “That’s Myrl Redding right about now,” says worried wrangler John C. McGinley.

Redding has decided to pick a fight with greed-head rancher Henry Ballard (L.Q. Jones), who is systematically buying up and fencing off the wide open spaces. He’s even begun charging his neighbors a fee to cross his expanding spread. Cusack’s rock-ribbed family man, who has already angered Ballard by speaking up for Wyoming statehood, is forced to leave a matched pair of prize stallions behind with the rancher as collateral, along with their Native American trainer (“Dances With Wolves’ ” Rodney A. Grant). When man and beast alike are sadistically mistreated, and corrupt lawyers and judges fail to act upon Redding’s righteous lawsuit, he mounts his own effort to force the rancher to pay compensation to the trainer, and nurse the animals back to health with his own hands.

Richly carpeted with visual and behavioral details, “The Jack Bull” is a revisionist western that wrestles with the genre’s classic conflicts, as the free-for-all atmosphere of the frontier is brought to heel by political institutions and the rule of law. Caught on the cusp between the lawless and the lawful, even a forward-looking statehood advocate like Redding has no choice left: He has to grow his own. The film is consistently supportive of Redding’s extra-legal activities, portraying him as a desperate idealist even when he assembles a massive posse that intimidates witnesses, burns barns and accidentally causes several deaths. “Myrl Redding didn’t fail the law,” snarls a tough-nut judge played by John Goodman, “the law failed Myrl.”

“The Jack Bull” is “based upon a true story,” although you won’t find the underlying legend in any history of the Wild, Wild West. The source is the fact-based German novel “Michael Kohlhaas,” by Heinrich von Kleist, originally published in 1808. (Director Volker Schlondorff filmed the Kohlhaas story in 1969, with David Warner in the title role, and the character Colehouse Walker, in “Ragtime,” was named after him.) The novel still occasionally crops up on Libertarian reading lists.

The German influence adds a spice of novelty to what is, in the western context, a familiar tale, a taming-the-wilderness saga like the OK Corral legend. Screenwriter Dick Cusack (John’s dad) has translated the action smoothly to the American frontier (in the original the horse trainer was a gypsy rather than an Indian) but the “noble outlaw” subtext lingers, redolent of 19th century romanticism. Viewers who don’t know the background may be puzzled by some of Myrl’s philosophical pronouncements, which include the assertion that the law he obeys “was there all along, in my mind. That law was there before we were born.”

John Cusack, who has been especially good (as in “Say Anything”) at portraying characters with complex inner resources, may seem a strange choice of casting for a staunch western role--until you realize that this character is no ordinary blunt-minded Westerner. He’s a slow but fierce thinker, one of nature’s noblemen. Redding communes with the Lord in his outdoor cathedral, and picks up the message loud and clear: “Remember who made this. Don’t get too big for your britches.”

* “The Jack Bull” premieres tonight on HBO at 9, with repeats Tuesday at 8 p.m. and April 25 at 10 p.m. The network has rated it TV-14VLD (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14, with special advisories for violence, language and suggestive dialogue).