The Iron Orchard movie review (2019)

Directed by Ty Roberts from a script he co-wrote with Gerry De Leon, “The Iron Orchard” sees young man Jim (Lane Garrison) setting out to find his fortune for what seems a particular reason. In flashbacks, we see him rollicking with pulchritudinous local honey Mazie (Hassie Harrison) and being told by Mazie’s mom that her girl won’t be marrying any grocery clerks. Taking a job with Bison Oil, Jim suffers the slings and arrows of bullying vets while also falling for Lee (Ali Cobrin), the wife of a colleague. Prudent in saving his money but less so in his unruly passions, he wins over the unhappy Lee (a never really-followed-up on scene depicts her distress by having her do a kind of Diane-Ladd-in-“Wild At Heart” thing with her lipstick) and together they run off so that Jim may Make His Own Way and do a lot of oil tycoon stuff.

Despite glistening montages of gushing rigs and fancy lifestyle accoutrements (this is a movie wherein the period detail is rendered by, among other things, vintage cars and trucks that always look as if they just drove off from the car wash, which practice kind of defeats its own purpose), Jim never wholly takes off, in part because of the aforementioned unruly passions. Too young at the time to realize that you shouldn’t marry another woman when you’re still having flashbacks about the girl you left behind, Jim is soon confronted by the girl he left behind, and soon enough he’s having flashbacks about Lee. Not quite, but almost.

This movie doesn’t have a “based on a true story” opening title card. It does have a few title cards telling a very brief history of Texas oil, including how that oil fueled the military of World War II — funnily enough, that war isn’t so much as mentioned again in the film, despite its being set in a time frame between 1939 and the late ‘50s; I’d have imagined it might have had some impact on the proceedings—and so on. As it happens it is based on a novel (this isn’t made clear in the credits) pseudonymously written by Edmund P. Van Zandt, and based on the lore of that fellow’s prominent Texas clan. Actor Ned Van Zandt, Edmund’s son, has a role in the movie, and its final credits feature what seems to be period home movie footage of a fellow in the oil game, and his family.