A rich young man (Hayden), insensate below the belt due to an accident, meets and falls hopelessly for a young woman (Leighton) who is sexy but poor. They intend to be married. Hayden's grandfather (Crenna) runs the ranch, which is the size of Greenland, and controls the money and property. Crenna believes that Leighton is just after Hayden's money and when the usual bickering follows the marriage, he gives Hayden an ultimatum. Throw her out or get thrown out with her. Hayden plumps for the latter option but when they run out of money he sinks into a bathtub full of booze and during a drunken argument he shoots and kills Leighton.
Now. This could be a great tragedy. It depends on how it's rendered. Or it could be a bluntly laid-out perspicuous story of crossed classes with little subtlety.
It's not a great tragedy.
The acting is okay. Crenna is Stallone's mentor with a Southern accent, but Hayden is at times fairly good. He LOOKS like a rich kid. He's blandly handsome, with a pug nose and the build of a jock. In the Northeast he would have gone to St. Paul's School in Concord and then Yale. In Texas he would have had a less flamboyant education and then inherited a great deal of wealth and married a socialite who knew which fork to use.
Leighton isn't bad either. She has the features and the sleek figure of a model but, judged by the norms of the Greenland Ranch, Incorporated, she's using them in all the wrong ways. Her mane of artificially dyed red hair is so voluminous it might have its own weather system. She cusses and talks like a cracker. Her idea of a good time is drinking Lone Star beer out of long necks and hustling pool while surrounded by rednecks who are positively magnetized by her rear end as she bends over to make a shot.
IS she after only his money? It's not clear. She seems to satisfy him sexually, which is, after all, an important consideration and carries some utility value of its own. But in the first half of the movie, she makes a couple of dubious remarks. "Better to catch somebody on the way up than on the way down." And she rags him about getting his own property so that the couple can live independently. At dinners, the family treat her with condescension, but she gives as good as she gets. No one would call her demure.
The reason it's not much of a tragedy is that the script doesn't give the actors much to work with. It's all there, as if in a comic book. What ambiguity we sense in the characters seems to be the result of accident or lack of attention. It appears to be missing in the effort department.
It could easily have been more artfully done. What was needed is a more thorough examination of the aristocratic values of the Texas moguls. Hayden is torn between his love for Leighton and his loyalty to his grandfather and his family. But what are those values and what justification are they given by those who hold them? Crenna never gets to explain them satisfactorily. Instead, the family is mostly shown as a bunch of snobs. When Leighton zooms up to the estate, late for her own wedding, the car radio is blaring some cowboy rock song, while the gawking wedding guests are listening to Vivaldi and one of the Brandenburg Concertos. I don't believe you'd hear much Bach at the Greenland Ranch. I harbor a deep suspicion that during a wedding you'd hear "Muskrat Love." As it stands, we're sympathetic towards Leighton and her uncomplicated tastes.
The movie doesn't give us an understanding of both perspectives. It switches our compassion back and forth from the family to Leighton without any overlap. In one scene Leighton seems genuinely and passionately in love with Hayden. In another, she's a gold digger. There's nothing in between, no blending of the two. And Hayden's family gets the same treatment: from concerned parental figures and then, blink, to a handful of arrogant uber-rich. It's as if a handful of Leggos had been assembled, each piece integral to itself, but they don't form any recognizable pattern.
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