Blood Red

This liberal quasi-Western is like the Jesse James story updated by the right-on, socially-minded Sundance Institute. Eric Roberts plays the no-good son of a 19th century immigrant Sicilian wine-grower whose livelihood is threatened by the railroad which a ruthless Irish carpetbagger (Hopper) plans to drive through the vineyards. After his father is killed, Roberts takes the law into his own hands, becoming an outlaw and rallying the hitherto pacifist Sicilians to the cause. What started as a sincere social drama suddenly explodes into a fully-fledged Western, with plenty of fisticuffs and gunplay. Julia Roberts stands around in the background looking pretty, with only a dozen or so lines.