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| DIRECTED BY |
| Robert Altman
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| STARRING |
| Warren Beatty |
| Julie Christie |
| William Devane |
| Keith Carradine |
| Shelley Duvall |
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Warning: Spoiler in Final Paragraph
Once one begins to forgive Altman�s major over-use of the �rapid zoom� technique combined with Leonard Cohen�s frontiersman music and gets by the hazed, sleep-inducing sepia texture of the whole film (it truly does look like an old photograph) they may begin to appreciate �McCabe and Mrs. Miller.� Altman�s fascination with random snippets of dialogue has always been entertaining and it�s used to a substantial degree here. The exteriors of this fledgling community are ugly and drearily realistic while the interiors look as if groups of people have been smoking cigars in the background for quite some time.
The sheer degree of uneasiness that Beatty emits in his first scene with the main bad guy is alone just about worth persevering through the lethargy that permeates throughout the first half of the film. This film is more interesting than most Westerns because � unlike what it looks like � it�s really not a Western and � unlike what Beatty�s character appears to be � he�s really not much of a traditional tough guy. It�s interesting to watch McCabe�s conflict of wills � he goes from being a strong-headed confidant to a meek coward to a reluctant gunslinger, all the while he seems fairly level-headed yet he�s actually quite impressionable and Beatty depicts these emotions with his infinitely watchable trademark charm.
What makes �McCabe and Mrs. Miller� notable is the fact that � despite the genre � its protagonist isn�t depicted as being some courageous figure so much as a simple, stubborn man who�s forced into battle (if anything, he�s actually quite cowardly.) This is a very interesting unconventionality. And even if McCabe didn�t quite make it all the way through in the end, he came out looking like a great man and a true pioneer anyhow.
