Silent Tongue ** (1993, River Phoenix, Richard Harris, Alan Bates, Dermot Mulroney, Sheila Tousey) – Classic Movie Review 4559

Writer-director Sam Shepard’s intelligent, atmospheric, offbeat Western was filmed near Roswell, New Mexico, in spring 1992, but not released until 1994. It stars River Phoenix, Richard Harris, Alan Bates, Dermot Mulroney and Sheila Tousey. It is slow moving, but thoughtful and well acted, with strong dialogue and powerful ideas, as expected from Shepard.

Phoenix stars as Talbot Roe, who has gone crazy over the death of his wife, but his father Prescott (Harris) wants to help him by finding him a new wife. So Prescott goes back to Eamon McCree (Bates), from whom he bought Talbot’s first wife, and also finds there the dead wife’s sister Awbonnie (Tousey), a champion horse rider and McCree’s daughter.

When McCree refuses to give his last daughter to his son, Roe kidnaps her and gets her to help him for gold and four horses.

Phoenix filmed it before The Thing Called Love (1993) and was working on Dark Blood at the time of his death from a drug overdose on 31 October 199.3 But Silent Tongue’s release was delayed and it was the last Phoenix movie to be released.

It was premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on 28 January 1993, screend at the London Film Festival on 15 November 1993 and finally released in the US on 1 February 1994.

Phoenix’s 13 films include Explorers (1985), Stand by Me (1986), The Mosquito Coast (1986), A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon (1988), Running on Empty (1988), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), My Own Private Idaho and Sneakers (1992) .

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4559

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