Keith Carradine

Charismatic gambler John McCabe (Warren Beatty) arrives in a mining community and decides to open a brothel. The local residents are impressed by his confident demeanor and fast talk, but crafty prostitute Constance Miller (Julie Christie) sees through McCabe's words and realizes he isn't as sharp as he seems. For a share in his profits, Mrs. Miller agrees to help plan and run McCabe's establishment, but soon a powerful company threatens to destroy what they have built up.

This terrific Walter Hill Western follows the careers of the James and Younger brothers--and uses the nifty idea of casting actual clans of acting siblings in the roles. Thus, the James brothers are played by James and Stacy Keach; the Youngers by David, Keith, and Robert Carradine; the Millers by Randy and Dennis Quaid; and the Fords by Christopher and Nicholas Guest. Hill, working with an evocative Ry Cooder score, creates a film that is at once breathtakingly exciting and elegiac in its treatment of these post-Civil War outlaws.