Far and Away (PG-13, 1992)

This is not a bad movie, but it is nowhere near a perfect one. There is some semi-strong language in this one, including hell, ass, son of a b*tch, piss, godd*mn, and vulgar remarks related to genitals (p*ssy). In the Sex department, you can see Shannon's exposed breast at one point, Joseph's butt, and a few times where the word p*ssy gets thrown around. There is a heck of a lot of drinking. They are both immigrants from Ireland, and the movie plays into that stereotype quite a bit. There is a lot of violence from a man getting shot twice at point blank range to Joseph fighting at a boxing match. The story is a little “Far and Away” in the terms of how far fetched this is. They get all the immigration stuff right, but they fail in the set up of how Shannon and Joseph become acquainted with each other. At the start of the movie Joseph's dad dies and leaves Joseph and his two brothers with a large debt on the land they rented out. So during the funeral their house gets burned to the ground by one of the landlord's riders who evict people from their houses. So Joseph is going to go to the landlord's property and kill him. But on his way he runs into the landlord (Daniel) and watches him get drunk at a pub (Irish Stereotype). After that he goes to his house with his gun and sleeps in the stable until morning so he can kill the landlord. The only problem is Shannon, who is the landlord's daughter, finds him in the stable and stabs him in the leg with a pitchfork. She runs inside and watches as Joseph tries to kill her father (landlord) and fails as the gun backfires into his face. So her family takes him in and cares for him. That is the first problem with the story, they take him in after he tries to kill the landlord. The second problem is that Shannon falls in love with Joseph. He tried to kill her father. So why she does I will never know. But most of the story problems do get worked out as the movie progresses and they immigrate to America. The acting is decent. Some of the scenes are overacted while some are underacted. The music is great thanks to John Williams' work with the score. The script is so-so do to what the set up was while they were in Ireland. Overall, this is an okay movie. It is not the best romantic movie I have seen, but it is not the worst. 3 out of 5.

I loved it. I really enjoyed Australia, and this is similar. I really enjoyed the relationship between Shannon (Nicole Kidman) and Joseph (Tom Cruise)