Portrays the life of a man who strives to be "a proper cowboy" despite radical changes that have propelled the Old West into a New Southwest characterized by industrialized agribusiness.
Henry Blanton is the 'last cowboy' of Jane Kramer's classic portrait, the failed hero of his own mythology, the man who ends an era for himself. His story - his flawed, funny, and in the end tragic efforts to be a proper cowboy, 'expressin' right' in a world where the range is a feed yard and college boys run ranches from air-conditioned Buicks - is the story of a country coming of age in a great promise and greater disappointment. A hundred and fifty miles up the highway from agribusiness Amarillo, Henry claimed the extravagant prerogatives of a free man on a horse. He rode his own frontier, decked out in his vigilance and his honour, until the shocking moment when, in the person of Henry Blanton, the West and the Western had a showdown.
