frederickgriffin Nice scenery, interesting character cast. Could have been subtitled, "The Ladies of Mercy Ranch". This must have been promoted to Lifetime Network as an afternoon movie for women. Lots of bonding between the sisters, a hot tub with candles and wine, trying on dresses, and other "girl" things. There are enough pickup trucks, horses, gunshots, and mild action scenes to keep the guys interested, but the ladies will enjoy this film much more.

sol ***SPOILERS*** It's when Montana cattle baron Jack Mercy kicked off or better yet passed away that he pulled off his last joke on those who worked on his ranch by designating his tomboy daughter Willa Mercy, Ashley Williams, to take over operations of the massive 25,000 acer Mercy Ranch. To make matters even worse for Willa and the ranch-hands Jack, in his will, had both his other two daughters, who never saw or heard of him until after his death, Tess & Lily, Charlotte Ross & Laura Mennell,forced to stay at the ranch for a full years time in order to get a piece of it, or 33.3%, which was worth some $8,000,000.00 for each of them!All this didn't go too well with the ranch-hands that included Ham, James Baker, together with Pickels, Donovan Workun, and Jim, Tom Carey, who found it very difficult taking orders from a woman! It wasn't long after that a number of cattle mutilations and what seemed like animal sacrifices and poisonings began to pop up at the ranch. Someone was trying to get Willa and her sisters to check out and then take over the ranch before the year was over. But who?As things soon turned out Lily's estranged and crazy husband Jesse, Scott Heindi,who beat her up regularly back in Virginia was out on bail and looking to make his wife's life miserable here in Montana like he did back home! A very jealous and dangerous man Jesse gunned down Lily's Indian lover Adam Wolfchild, Nathanlel Arcand, when he spotted two together kissing leaving Wolfchild for dead and taking a terrified Lily hostage. It's now up to the tall blond and handsome county sheriff Nate, Aaron Pearl, who's in fact having an affair with Tess to get the guy off the streets or ranch before he does any more damage!**SPOILERS*** It's after Jesse is dispatched by the sharp-shooting Willa that you realize that he in fact isn't the person who's been committing all these crimes at the ranch that included the murder and mutilation as well as scalping of poor Pickels. It was Pickel's who had the misfortune of running into the unseen killer when he was coming back to the Mercy Ranch with the daily groceries. In fact the out of control and mentally deranged Jesse was both too crazy & stupid to pull all the crimes off successfully! As it turned out later it was someone else and he was greatly ticked off at the late Jack Mercy for leaving his entire spread, the Mercy Ranch, to his three daughters two of whom he never met in his entire life!Taking Willa hostage the deranged killer gives her the usual speech about how he deserves everything that she and Tess & Lily got and what a raw deal he got out of all this in the late Jack Mercy treating him like dirt! In fact the psycho tells Willa that Jack loved his animals even more then himself! His own flesh & blood! To finally put an end to the movie, that seemed to go on forever,and the crazed killer Willa's boyfriend the tall dark, maybe a little on the light side, and handsome Gary Cooper looking Ben McKintock, John Corbett, comes to her rescue just in the nick of time! Shocked at the sight of the macho as well as strong and silent type Ben Willa's kidnapper, a crack shot with a rifle, lost his composer and missed Ben, who was no more the 15 feet away from him, by a country mile. Ben now getting a clear shot at the now scared in his underwear killer had no trouble ending his killing spree, of both humans and animals, by both finishing him off as well as putting an end to the movie!

t_lea9 I just wanted to say that I thought this movie was pretty good. I am from Montana only about 2 hours from Bozeman. It seems that the movie was in the Bozeman area, but I have never heard of Monroe County and I have yet to find a Monroe County anywhere in Montana. I love to watch movies where they take place in Montana and this one was so close to home and then I find out that the area facts were not straight...it was a bummer.I read some other comments about how the ranch was not a realistic Montana Ranch and for the average ranch of course its not, but there are a few ranched in Montana that are big and luxurious like the one in the movie. And yes its true Montana people think that Californian's have no business being in Montana, and it also did not surprise me that the sheriff ended up wanting to date the Hollywood lady, but I agree the way it went about wasn't very smooth.As for Willow and Ben I think it was...I thought they had a funny relationship and it made perfect sense to me. I didn't understand why Lilly never got any chores unless it was because Willow felt sorry for her because of the bruises.

trammie7 I wondered how they were going to pack all of Roberts' truly great 'Montana Sky' into two hours. Sad to say, they couldn't.The basic premise packed three relationships, four, counting the sisters themselves, over a year's time, along with all the mysterious happenings within that period. Only the barest of bones of the story were touched on and even those were rewritten and reworked. Other than the names of the characters, hardly anything, including the events, how they unfolded, and how they were resolved, resembled the original story.As to the actors: Both Laura Mennell as 'Lila' and Charlotte Ross as 'Tess' fit the concept I had of them, but although Ashely Williams did a wonderful job, I couldn't see her as the 'Willa' I imagined in the book. I so adore John Corbett, he was one of the reasons I looked forward to the movie. He had the perfect personality for 'Ben', though in real life he's a good ten years or more older than the character he portrayed. I guess it made sense that 'Nate's' occupation was changed from lawyer to sheriff and Aaron Pearl was good in the re-scripted role. Nathaniel Arcand played a convincing 'Adam'.I couldn't help but think as I read 'Montana Sky', then watched it, that the novel would have been much better adapted to a mini-series. It would have allowed the characters and the events to be fleshed out and evolve as they deserved. In comparison, Angels Fall made a much better transition from book to screen in that it didn't have as much ground to cover and could afford to have some parts dropped without losing the essence of the story.