Meryl Streep's Only Western Is A 2014 Hidden Gem That's Streaming On Prime Video

When you think of modern day Westerns, it's hard not to conjure up an image of Tommy Lee Jones traversing a dusty, tumbleweedy expanse astride a horse. But Jones didn't appear in an honest-to-Ford oater until he joined Robert Duvall on the trail in the superb CBS miniseries adaptation of Larry McMurtry's novel "Lonesome Dove." As for the big screen, his first official Western movie was Ron Howard's dour "The Missing." Since then, he's largely avoided Westerns unless he's calling the shots. This has worked out well for Jones, if only because his rep for giving actors space to fully inhabit their characters has brought some of our greatest living performers to the most American of film genres.

Case in point: Meryl Streep can and seemingly has done everything, but she didn't appear in a Western until Jones came calling with a small yet pivotal role in 2014's "The Homesman" (which is currently streaming on Prime Video). Unlike the Jones-directed neo-Western "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada," "The Homesman" is a straight-up Western set in the Nebraska Territory of 1854. Based on a novel by Glendon Swarthout, a versatile writer who penned the elegiac "The Shootist" and the spring break romp "Where the Boys Are," the film stars Hilary Swank as Mary Bee Cuddy, a 31-year-old school teacher from New York who's moved to the territory searching for a stable life and husband. When the latter proves hard to come by, she sinks into a deep depression.

Cuddy then finds herself embarking on a perilous eastward journey to Iowa, where she's to deliver three local women to a sanctuary for the mentally ill overseen by a Methodist minister and his wife (Streep). Cuddy is thwarted every step of the way but heroically persists. This is where Jones' character comes in.

The inexperienced Cuddy is placed in charge of three women suffering from a condition called "prairie madness": Arabella Sours (Grace Gummer) is reeling from the loss of three children to diphtheria, Gro Svendsen (Sonja Richter) has been worn down by an abusive husband and the death of her mother, and Theoline Belknap (Miranda Otto) is hanging on by a thread after killing her own child due to a disastrously bad harvest. Cuddy is skeptical of her own ability to successfully lead this expedition, so when she encounters George Briggs (Tommy Lee Jones), a land thief who's been left to hang, she cuts him down and offers him $300 to help her reach Iowa. He reluctantly accepts.

"The Homesman" is a rough ride. Jones, along with co-writers Kieran Fitzgerald and Wesley Oliver, portray Cuddy and Briggs' plight with relentless realism; though they employ conventional elements (including a run-in with unfriendly Pawnee), there's little in the way of reassurance. You feel, in the pit of your stomach, that they are destined for a bad end, but this tale takes a few left turns that you can't possibly see coming. Working with celebrated cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto ("Brokeback Mountain," "Killers of the Flower Moon"), and blessed with a "Million Dollar Baby"-level performance from Hilary Swank, Jones paints a rigorously dark vision of the pre-Civil War Midwest that'll leave you rattled long after the credits roll.

I can't discuss Meryl Streep's role without spoiling the entire film, but, spoiler alert, she's sensational! It's obvious throughout why Jones wouldn't let anyone else direct this material. "The Homesman" is a tragedy that views Westward expansion with a total absence of warmth. Cruelty was the coin of the realm then, and, sadly, nothing has changed.