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The Hired Hand (1971)

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No Score Yet...

Average Rating: N/A
Critic Reviews: 3
Fresh: 2 | Rotten: 1

audience

67

liked it
Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 1,517

My Rating

Movie Info

Meeting largely mixed reviews during its first run in 1971, counterculture icon Peter Fonda's directorial debut was restored and remastered for its 30-year anniversary. The film opens with three drifters greeting the morning by cavorting in a sun-dabbled mountain river. Harry Collings (Fonda) catches a fish and gives it to Arch Harris (Warren Oates) who grills it over a low fire, while Dan (Robert Pratt) -- the youngest of the three -- bathes in the swift moving current. Later, as they head into

R,

Western, Drama, Action & Adventure, Classics

Alan Sharp

Oct 28, 2003

Sundance Channel Home Entertainment

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All Critics (16) | Top Critics (5) | Fresh (12) | Rotten (1) | DVD (6)

A touching and absurd example of the hippie western.

October 14, 2003 Full Review Source: Village Voice
Village Voice
Top Critic IconTop Critic

This groundbreaking 1971 western nimbly upsets most of our expectations about cowboy movies.

August 7, 2003 Full Review Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Top Critic IconTop Critic

If Dennis Hopper dismantles revisionist-Western ennui in The Last Movie, Fonda embellishes it with poetic muddiness

September 6, 2009 Full Review Source: CinePassion
CinePassion

Bloom is excellent as the abandoned wife who aserts her independence even when she's so vulnerable.

September 27, 2007 Full Review Source: Ozus' World Movie Reviews
Ozus' World Movie Reviews

...perhaps the best of that cycle of realistic, existential Westerners produced in the late 1960s and early 1970s

January 7, 2005 Full Review
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Now that it has been restored, people are beginning to realize it got a bum rap back in the day.

October 23, 2003
Planet Sick-Boy

A work dear to Fonda's heart, he has often spoken of his wish for this film to be his epitaph. It's one that would do any director proud.

December 17, 2001 Full Review Source: BBC

Audience Reviews for The Hired Hand

[font=Century Gothic][color=sienna] "The Hired Hand" is a 1971 western directed by Peter Fonda(his first, and perhaps only noticeable effort) about a man who after several years wandering aimlessly with his pal through the West, decides to return to the wife he left several years before. The movie is deliberately paced and occasionally artsy. It is worthwhile because of the spotlight on the relationships between the characters and for one notable speech given by Verna Bloom who plays the abandoned wife. And Warren Oates has another very good performance in this movie.[/color][/font]
January 1, 2005
Harlequin68
Walter M.

Super Reviewer

there are a number of things i really liked about this, but too much time was spent on "cinema trickery" that was unnecessary. Fonda's performance was maybe the weakest out of the entire cast.
December 12, 2008
villainforhire

Super Reviewer

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