Miles from Home

Sinise's opening sequence of Khrushchev paying an official visit to Iowa's most productive farm, shaking hands with the proud owner (Dennehy), and rumpling his small sons' hair, is so singular and promising that the film never really recovers from it. It settles for being the story of the two sons disillusionment as they are disinherited by the march of financial speculation, and forced into rebellion. In many ways, it's a late straggler in the brief farm genre, but the presence of Gere as the older brother, Frank, unbalances any attempt at airing agricultural grievances. Promp to resort to the gun, a hell-raising outlaw in a black hat, Frank is the stuff of Hollywood, and his relationship with his idolising brother, sensitive, circumspect Terry (Anderson), is practically a screen syndrome. The final shot of Frank's hat lying on a country road being taken up by another kid gives some idea of the deterioration that has taken place.