Viewers looking for a classic western risk to be disappointed by this movie. It's not that shotgun duels are missing completely, but this film is not about shotgun duels. Most disappointed will certainly be action movies fans if they happen to see this film, as the pace is slow and the emphasize is on something else. Director Maggie Greenwald focused here on the life of women in the West, and on the possibility of leading an alternative style of life during that period.
The result is a different type of movie, different in subject, style and pace than you would expect. The title says it all maybe, the film is a ballad in the sense that it focuses on the hero - in this case a woman thrown out from her Eastern rich environment, running away, and choosing to live all her life in disguise as a man. Was this possible? Probably so, as the film is said to be inspired by a true story.
There is some fine acting especially from Suzy Amis which sustains the film, and also a very closely and carefully rendition of details of the day-to-day life in the epoch. However this is not enough to maintain interest for the full duration of the two hours, some of the characters seem too remote and too hard to read missing the chance to involve the viewer in becoming interested in their destinies. Maybe the director kept intentionally the distance and did not want to reveal too much of their secrets, same as the folks around Little Jo did not push too much to be able to understand her real secret. The result is that a film which could shock and involve by presenting the continuity of the harsh realities of the status of women and other minorities all over the American history fails to do so completely.
It is still worth watching, especially as the end brings at least part of that dose of sharpness and weirdness missing in much of the rest of the movie. I am however wondering where talents like director Maggie Greenwald and actress Suzy Amis disappeared in the fifteen years that passed since this film was released.
