Fox Movie Channel

Cowboy Upgrade, or, A Long Slow Burn

Say your husband's a big jerk. He yells at you and he's mean. But, on the other hand, he's rich and powerful and you're kind of superficial so you don't want to live without money or power. But still, he's a jerk and you hate him a lot.

Then imagine that one day you're out in the desert on some sort of mineral scouting trek with your meanie husband and a hot scruffy down-home cowboy type who is acting as your guide. (Also, I should mention that it's the 70s, so your idea of fashion is a polyester pantsuit and the hottie cowboy mineral speculator for sure has a mustache.) Your husband, in true form, drinks and is mean to you and the cowboy. This bugs you immensely. So when, due to his general jerk nature, your hubby spooks his horse, the horse throws him and he tumbles down a cliff into the desolate burning depths of the desert, you decide this is a pretty opportune moment to leave him to die. Let him dehydrate and starve and burn to death out there so you can take all his money, buy lots of new polyester pantsuits and bag that cowboy. Sounds like a plan.

Now, let's look at this the other way. Say you're a super rich uber jerk, and you and your manipulative wife (you knew well enough to get that bitch to sign a pre-nup) are out with some dopey cowboy on a mineral scouting expedition into the desert. Of course you're drinking: they suck, it's hot, your horse has some sort of attitude. And suddenly everything in your life changes: you're at the bottom of a cliff with a broken leg, you have very little in the way of supplies and you realize that not only are your awful wife and that bozo playboy cowboy not going to help you, they are, in fact, plotting against you. Your money can't help you. There's no one around for you to abuse. You're going to die.

And that's how the aptly named Ordeal begins. The majority of the Lee H. Katzin made-for-TV movie is just Arthur Hill's tough millionaire character struggling to survive in the desert. Initially he's motivated by rage and revenge, but eventually, after talking to some lizards, traveling epic distances in the brutal heat, eating a variety of gross things, and spending a lot of time trying not to die, something shifts in Hill's character, in his view of life. There is a moment when he totally zens out. It's a rather thoughtful, internal thing to happen in a made-for-TV movie (or, for that manner, in any movie). To contrast his burning desert hell, the movie craftily cuts to evil wifey, played by Diana Muldaur (who you may recognize from Star Trek and lot of other things) enjoying a cool dip in a tasty bikini. However, things with her mineral cowboy boyfriend, played by James Stacy, are not going swimmingly at all, as they unsurprisingly discover their affair is tainted by its wicked origins.

I'm not going to tell you how it plays out, but the end is not at all what I expected. The movie overall is entertaining, if slow, and weirdly thought provoking, and totally without a normal structure where things definitively conclude. But I can make some of my own conclusions. Like that the moral of this movie is that you shouldn't go in the desert if you have a bad marriage. Or if your guide is an unsavory cowboy. Or if you don't like to talk to lizards. Or if you're not prepared to be thirsty.