The beginning of this Tommy Lee Jones-directed drama is stunning, capturing the bleak, dusty landscape of the mid-19th-century Nebraska territory. The sense of these settlers battling both loneliness and fearsome nature is palpable. Hilary Swank holds the story's center as Mary Bee Cuddy, a 31-year-old single woman trying to make a life in this harsh world. Swank is utterly believable as someone who's strong but, underneath her starchiness, sensitive - someone who could hold her own in the wild (Mid)west. A quibble: much is made of how "plain" the character is, but Swank is plain only in Hollywood's view. Cuddy agrees to drive a stagecoach back east with three women who have gone insane in Nebraska. She's joined by Jones, as a devilish, exasperating rogue (and Jones doesn't hold himself back on the humor front). Things in "The Homesman" go off the rails about two-thirds of the way through - more a function of the plot (based on Glendon Swarthout's novel) than the filmmaking. Also noteworthy: Meryl Streep and James Spader each turn up in delicious cameos. Streep's daughter, Grace Gummer, plays one of the mad women being brought back to their families in Iowa.

- KRISTINA DORSEY