At Home on the Range: ‘L’Amour’s Crossfire Trail’

Tom Selleck proves he can still shoot and ride with the best of ‘em in “Louis L’Amour’s Crossfire Trail,” a savvy and highly satisfying western airing Sunday on TNT.

Boasting the traditional, tried-and-true elements of time-honored tales set on the open plains, this strikingly shot adventure based on L’Amour’s novel offers blue skies, beautiful vistas, honorable heroes, hissable villains, a pretty schoolmarm and plenty of gunplay. What more could one want?

Selleck plays Rafe Covington, an honest, literate, God-fearing cowboy in chaps who promises a dying friend to look after his ranch and widow in 1880 Wyoming. Unfortunately, the widow, Ann (Virginia Madsen), is being wooed by Bruce Barkow, the scheming big man in town (Mark Harmon) who holds the mortgage to her property. And well-mannered, two-faced Barkow, who looks spiffy in a straw hat, aims to get his hands on everything, including the lady.

Rafe’s trusty sidekicks include a loyal kid (Christian Kane), an Irishman (David O’Hara) who tells amusing stories and an older cuss named Joe who can’t shoot (Wilford Brimley, initially unrecognizable with ragged, shoulder-length hair). Whenever Rafe surprises Joe with his unexpected knowledge of one thing or another, the droll protagonist simply replies, “It’s a gift.”

When the good guys refuse to leave the ranch, Barkow enlists the help of a hired killer (Brad Johnson), who hits town with black hat and piercing gaze in place. Johnson’s Bo Dorn is a baddie who doesn’t leave Kansas unless he’s on his way to shoot somebody, and he’s “tougher than the back wall of a shooting gallery.”

The amiable script by Charles Robert Carner sports several lines of dandy dialogue, as in one scene when the slovenly sheriff (Barry Corbin) reluctantly oversees Barkow’s marriage to an unwilling Ann. “Not my finest hour,” the lawman observes, with a small measure of self-loathing.

After an earlier altercation, the kid tells Rafe, “That was good shooting.” Retorts Rafe: “That wasn’t shootin’. That was killin’.”

The final act offers the inevitable showdown, and it’s a solid one as directed by Simon Wincer (“Lonesome Dove,” “Quigley Down Under”), who saves the film’s formidable firepower for the finish.

You won’t find any shades of gray in this old-fashioned yarn, and that’s intended as a compliment. Selleck and the supporting cast are uniformly good, with Harmon just fine in a role that enables him to break from the straight-and-narrow nice guys he generally portrays.

Happy trails.

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“Louis L’Amour’s Crossfire Trail” can be seen Sunday at 8 and 10 p.m. and midnight Sunday on TNT. The network has rated it TV-14-LV (may be unsuitable for children under age 14, with advisories for coarse language and violence).