TV Review : Outlaw Lovers Ride ‘The Desperate Trail’

A stylish directorial debut by a moviemaker paying apparent homage to Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone--particularly in the expertly staged gunfight scenes--turns “The Desperate Trail” into an unexpectedly good ride.

It’s unexpected because the movie, on TNT Sunday, begins conventionally with a cliched stagecoach ambush before the surprises unfold and hurtle quickly into a Westernized “Bonnie and Clyde.” Young director and co-writer P.J. Pesce gives his outlaw lovers (Linda Fiorentino and Craig Sheffer) much the same appeal as Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty enjoyed in the Depression-era gangster movie.

In this case, the unlikely partners, felons and growing soul mates are being pursued by a furious marshal on a personal quest (Sam Elliott, sporting that craggy archetypal Western visage) that progressively darkens into a doomed tale.

Fiorentino (as alluringly icy here as in her last year’s breakthrough movie “The Last Seduction”) charges the genre’s male preserve with a strong female presence, her bitterness melting only by inches.

In fact, this is a Western grounded in dimensional principals, among them Frank Whaley’s visionary astrologer-brother and Sheffer’s con-man-turned-moral-avenger. (It was Sheffer who played Brad Pitt’s steadier older brother in “A River Runs Through It.”)

Markedly propulsive are the exceptionally executed shootouts, deceptively well-designed and curiously rhythmic in their sudden splatter and dance of mayhem.

* “The Desperate Trail” airs Sunday at 5, 7, 9 and 11 p.m. on TNT, with additional airings Wednesday and Saturday at 5 p.m.