Critique du Library Journal

Heady from his 1978 Oscar triumph with The Deer Hunter, director Cimino followed up in 1980 with this drawn-out revisionist Western that took a whipping from critics and bit the dust at the box office. Notorious for cost overruns that helped bankrupt United Artists, the film was a colossal failure, detailed by studio production chief Steven Bach in his book Final Cut: Dreams and Disaster in the Making of Heaven's Gate (1996). Loosely based on the Johnson County War of 1892, Gate's tale of Wyoming cattle barons legally sanctioned to execute poaching immigrant settlers is neither as bad as its detractors declare nor as good as its contrarian defenders argue. Kris Kristofferson cuts a fine figure as the honorable marshal who decries the "death list," pitting him against the hired gunslinger (Christopher Walken) with whom he vies for the affections of a brothel madam (Isabelle Huppert). -VERDICT A script-challenged but handsomely mounted demythologizing of the Old West focusing on class conflict, Gate deserves another chance from audiences unencumbered by the movie's three-decades-old baggage-especially in this carefully restored, director's-cut form with extras putting the film in perspective. An earlier, inferior-looking DVD should be ridden from library shelves.-Jeff T. Dick, Davenport, IA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.