Miles from Home (1988)

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

A friend borrowed this DVD from a library in farming country Saskatchewan. Now, I was raised on a farm in Southern Ontario, lost to the same Farm Creditor shenanigans portrayed in this movie, so I have great sympathy for the story line. BUT, if these two idiots drank as much as is portrayed throughout this movie, when they should have been working the farm, then no wonder they lost it.But after too many minutes of gnawing my knuckles, hoping that the hokey acting would end, I know why I never heard of this movie Miles From Home before…. And I hope I never hear of it again… Okay, this movie killed time but I nearly died watching it… (I am certain some rich movie reviewer has already copyrighted that line)...God, I hope your evening was more entertaining… take me out and shoot me… a bunch of drunk farmers burning down farms because of Farm Creditors…? Could have been a good movie,should have been a good movie because it did start out right... burning a farm down because some fat creditor might get it? Every citizen who wants justice in our real lives sure could use this premise in real life... but… hooo boy…Probably got its 5.7 out of 10 rating from the drunken cowboy-farmer population who would buy this thing and then donate ten to the local library and give it a 9 because they could get the sympathy vote after blowing their tellie apart when the evil bank manager shows up on screen??? Gere as a cowboy? Just did not work! Maybe it was the Buddhist Angst just starting to build in him. And Helen Hunt appearing on screen for five minutes to suck tongue with Gere… Gee whiz, the earlier session with Gere in a trailer bedroom doing a trailer lady who was once a farmer and lost her farm for the same reasons? Sexual titillation for minutes and minutes (audio only, damn!) made Hunt's part with Gere totally ludicrous and irrelevant to the theme of the movie… Wheehaaaa, ride her cowboy! I was sayin'… I mean, with the actress who appeared earlier in the movie and seemed to be one of the rare persons in this film who knew what the term 'acting' meant… hard to say why Hunt was even in the movie, except maybe as a crowd draw via the billboard titles at the theatres… No droolin', only dumb drawlin' in this thing… These actors obviously NEVER had to deal with the realities of this stuff farmers do face or they would have applied some real emotion to their acting situations...For the moments that Gere did swing a gun around on screen, I was hoping it would turn into a real one, swing my way and put me out of my misery. Happened more than a couple of places in this movie...Oh, watch it for some of the scenery and for that moaning and shrieking scene near the start but DO NOT go out and buy this movie, unless you are one of those kinda people who collects everything about Robert, oooopppps, Richard Gere.... seeeeee. Just proving how fast I wanted to forget who acted in this thing...The first movie I have ever rated below 5 because I try to see the good in every movie.... hmmmmm, so why did I give it 3??? Oh, yeah! For the trailer park sex segment that should prove to guys that anything over three minutes might actually interest a real woman... So, it does have some sex education merit, I suppose...

This multi-layered morality film is not as easy to watch as something with a romantic veneer, like Bonnie and Clyde for example, but it runs much, much deeper into the core of our nature than many others do. The story involves two brothers who are fighting to save the family farm for reasons that are never too obvious given the shrewd script, the carefully placed focus we have on the home, the community, the other players.Richard Gere as Frank Roberts gives a masterful display as the guilt ridden son letting down his father, his family, himself, and yet appearing, by the end of the film to be the only one with a soul, with warmth, with feelings, with an identity that hasn't to be etched out by someone else.The imagery is often raw as in the "beast of burden" being forced to pull more than it can, whilst an evil showman cracks his whip and the audience calls for the beast to pull. It seems only we and Gere can see what is going on. And a bank robbery where morality goes all over the place except where it should lie courtesy of such clever acting and script. And a final scene allowing us to make up our own minds about what we learned during this wonderful feast of images.This is drama to be admired for what it depicts rather than any thrills or spills or CGI. It is definitely adult and definitely compelling once the stage is set but I wonder if it was ever really commercial.Nine out of Ten.

There was a Midwestern farm crisis from 1984 to 1987 or so, and Nikita Kruschev did come to Iowa to the Garst farm at Coon Rapids as I recall. There are some good things about this movie, but I think the bad things outweigh them. It is one of the few movies about modern agriculture. The incident at the trailer house makes Gere's character look like a real loser. The incident with the ox pull makes you wonder if there was cruelty to an animal. You don't usually see an armed guard at a bank in Iowa. Maybe the writer watched too many Andy Griffith shows. I've never seen a grain truck back into an elevator and I've never seen a combine unloading corn into a truck on the go in real life. All in all, I can't help but think that someone in the state of Iowa could have written a better movie.

I was in this movie as the kid who drove a bike across the screen when the vehickle pulls in to the trailor park and they dunk down and then the Linn County Sheriffs dept drives by them then I drive a bike across the picture and my brother is throwing a football. Its a good movie with downhome values