TV movie Last Stand At Saber River starring Tom Selleck is a great western that more fans of the genre need to see. While he started his career long before Magnum P.I., that’s the project that made Tom Selleck a star. The Hawaii set series followed the adventures of the titular P.I. and it became a major success for CBS; it also crossed over with shows like Simon & Simon and Murder, She Wrote during its run. Magnum P.I. was still a success when Selleck decided to leave after season 8.
This led to a film career that included hits like Three Men And A Baby and its sequel, but a lot of his movies like Her Alibi, An Innocent Man and western Quigley Down Under only did modest business. He would later return to TV with a recurring part on Friends, in addition to a leading role on cop drama Blue Bloods and playing the title character in the Jesse Stone series of TV movies.
Tom Selleck has also appeared in quite a few TV movie westerns, including The Shadow Riders, Crossfire Trail, and Monte Walsh, but the best of the bunch is Last Stand At Saber River. This movie is based on Elmore Leonard’s (Jackie Brown) novel of the same name, where Selleck plays Paul Cable, who returns home after fighting for the confederacy. His wife Martha (Suzy Amis, Titanic) heard he’d died in battle so his return is a shock, and Paul learns one of his children died while he was away. This leads to tension since she hates he left them to fight in the war. Cable later takes the clan to Arizona to retake land they own.
That’s where things take a turn for the worst in Last Stand At Saber River because when the family arrives they find former Union soldiers, led by Duane Kidston (David Carradine, Kill Bill), have taken over and don’t feel like handing it back to a confederate. Naturally, this evolves to bullets flying, but given this is an Elmore Leonard story, things progress in surprising ways. Last Stand At Saber River is a quality western filled with great performances – including an early role for The Sixth Sense’s Haley Joel Osment – and while it’s old-fashioned in many ways it adds some fresh wrinkles to the genre too.
Characters that appear simple are revealed to be much more nuanced and the story features some real surprises. The strained marriage between Cable and Martha is the real heart of Last Stand At Saber River though and they have a much more complex love story than the typical western.