As long as both Tom Selleck and Sam Elliott are alive and hale and hearty, Louis L'Amour western novels will have an outlet on the big and small screen. Westerns maybe getting fewer and fewer made, but Crossfire Trail will stand up to any made in Hollywood's golden age.

Selleck plays your unambiguous western hero in this film, a Shane like knight of the plains. A dying friend asks Selleck to take care of his wife and ranch that he left. As it turns out the friend was run out of the area because the big man of the valley wants both the ranch and the wife Virginia Madsen in equal measure.

Mark Harmon who is usually a good guy on the big and small screen is one nasty piece of work. He's told Madsen she's a widow by dint of the Sioux. Her land is a good spread, but Harmon is thinking with his male member more than anything. More in keeping with today's mores than the old time western.

But that doesn't lessen Selleck as a cowboy hero. He's got himself his own posse with Wilford Brimley as a cantankerous old timer in the Gabby Hayes tradition, Christian Kane as the impetuous young timer, and David O'Hara as a most traditional Irishman with a taste for brew and brawls.

You'll also remember Brad Johnson who like Jack Palance in Shane is a badman with very few words and a keen sharpshooter's eye. That's bad news for one of Selleck's crew.

For those who say good westerns aren't still being made I would offer Crossfire Trail from one of the best sources Louis L'Amour.

Though the story is entirely formulaic, gorgeous Canadian backgrounds and excellent casting give "Crossfire Trail" a formidable presence on the small screen courtesy of cable mainstay TNT. I never could quite picture Tom Selleck in Westerns following his 'Magnum PI' days, but he's entirely convincing here as Rafe Covington, fulfilling a dying wish to a friend who was shanghaied and beaten to death. His arch rival is town boss Bruce Barkow (Mark Harmon),who's effectiveness as a villain requires him to overcome his good looks and fine manners. Maybe that's why he's such a great bad guy, even without a black hat; his nasty turn near the end of the story runs completely against any stereotype you may have of him from his earlier work. But if the devil is in the details, you really have to admire the casting of the supporting players. The part of Joe Gill doesn't look like it would fit Wilford Brimley, but Brimley makes it his as he takes up with Rafe's cause. William Sanderson as the bartender starts out one dimensionally until that fateful stand he takes in defense of Anne Rodney (Virginia Madsen),and wait, didn't Barry Corbin look and sound just great channeling Edgar Buchanan as Sheriff Moncrief?

With lines like "Guess today wasn't my day to die" and "That wasn't shootin', that was killin'", the dialog is a bit clichéd, but doesn't suffer from being over emphasized. That's not the reason to tune in anyway, what you're going for is good old fashioned good versus evil, and there's plenty of that courtesy of Barkow, his toady hoods and hired gun Beau Dorn (Brad Johnson). Dorn looked a bit too sophisticated though for his part, I would have preferred a more seasoned looking villain like John Russell's Stockburn character from "Pale Rider". The final showdown has a bit of "High Noon" going for it with the last bullet fired, fitting since Anne Rodney had to put up with her fair share of abuse.

In fact, watch that gun fight between Beau Dorn and Covington closely. As Rafe stands facing the dying Dorn, he's shot in the front right shoulder by Barkow, but as the camera pulls away, Barkow is clearly standing well in back of Rafe, with Rafe's back to Barkow. That was some exercise in ballistics!

Tom Selleck's performances in Western films seem to be getting better with age, 'Crossfire' compares favorably with 1990's "Quigley Down Under" and is heads and shoulders above 1982's "The Shadow Riders". With any luck, there might be one more good part out there for Selleck as he turns the corner on sixty and heads into the sunset.

The Western is a dying genre and it never ceases to amaze me that it is so. It is being displaced by the cops 'n robbers, grisly hero shoot'em-ups and a variety of other overly violent superhero vehicles. As a kid, I grew up on Westerns and could not get enough of them. The bad guys always wore black hats and the hero, like Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and others always wore the white hats coming to the rescue of the ladies at the last moment. Villains were slime-suckers and deserved all they got. I mean, who could even feel a twinge of regret when Joel McCrea shot Brian Donlevy in the Virginian after he engineered Sonny Tufts getting hung? Well, this film loosely based on a Louis L'Amour story takes us back to a time when heros were just that: bigger than life figures that placed honor, decency and the love of their horses above the petty greed and avarice of the weaker villains. Selleck is outstanding in this role as Rafe Covington who comes to "take care of" the widow of a friend (whom we later learn he knew but a short time). What commitment! Now, we get some growls here from the peanut gallery from some who fail to understand the archetype the Western Hero is based on and even one faithful Louis L'Amour fan who cries foul at the departures from the original. OK. We can let that go. Someone observes that Selleck leaving his Magnum PI role is a "natural" for Westerns. I second that! He does. His pals, veteran character actor Wilfred Brimley, Kane and O'Hara add texture to the hero role while the villains are outright scumbags, especially usual good-guy Mark Harmon and refugee from the rapture, Brad Johnson (glad he made it out of the apocalypse). These baddies are REAL bad. Cheap made-for-TV has-been Western flick? No way, José. This is FINE entertainment and I wish they had a lot more of it.