The Hired Hand movie review & film summary (1972)

All of this happens in a succession of shimmering photographic images, slow dissolves, sunstruck double-exposures and camera work that seems lyrical for a Western. "The Hired Hand" is a very quiet movie, for that matter, drawing on the detached mysticism that Peter Fonda always seems to exude. The music by Bruce Langhorne is a series of variations on simple themes, played in a straightforward manner by a few folk instruments.

The result of all this is that "The Hired Hand" doesn't pay off for audiences looking for a Western. Although good Westerns have always been morality plays, most of them have arrived at morality after a journey through a violent and action-oriented story. That doesn't happen here; the villain simply kidnaps the best friend, and announces he will cut off one of Oates' fingers every week until Fonda comes to rescue him. This leads to a foredoomed confrontation and to a death that is as inevitable as the deaths at the end of "Easy Rider."

Fonda and Dennis Hopper popularized the masochistic death-of-the-hero ending in "Easy Rider," and since then it has become conventional in a certain sort of youth movie. The Idea is that death, by its awesome finality, casts a significant light on the everyday events that went before.

Well, it does to a degree, but usually what happens is a sort of metaphysical overkill, and we're left sitting in the theater wishing the hero had gathered his rosebuds while he could. Throwing in a death at the end of a movie is getting to be less significant and more cheap, I think; in the hands of more thoughtful directors, everyday events have their own human meanings and don't need to be gussied up by Christ symbolism.