Summary
A windswept Oklahoma canvas unfurls as a rust-colored dawn bleeds across the prairie, and into this bruised horizon rides Brick Willock—outlaw, reluctant archangel, a man whose shadow smells of cordite and contrition. He snatches little Lahoma Gledware and her feckless father Henry from a circling wolf-pack of his own brethren, the Kimball clan, whose leader Red nurses vendetta like a dark rosary. One thunderclap gunshot later, Kansas Kimball’s heart is mulch, and Brick’s past clings to his boots like red clay. With the girl orphaned by her father’s caprice—Henry abdicates parenthood to chase a Comanche princess—Brick hangs up his six-shooter, becomes both Penitente and paterfamilias, rearing Lahoma under the watch of gnarled ranch-hand Bill Atkins. Years drip away; the prairie grass learns her name. Enter Will Compton, callow easterner with homestead dreams and ink still wet on his heart, who falls for the now-grown Lahoma like a comet into gravity. Brick, grizzled gatekeeper of Eden, banishes the suitor, fearing love will only fetch more blood. Lahoma, unbowed, rides to Kansas City and, behind velvet curtains, eavesdrops on Red Kimball forging a bogus warrant—a paper guillotine meant for Brick. She torches the scheme; Kimball, stripped of law, resorts to primal lead, drilling Brick in the dusk. Yet the old outlaw’s final heartbeat squeezes off a answering shot; Kimball crumples, symmetry achieved. Will returns, not as interloper but as witness, and amid the sage and sorrow the survivors wed, stitching a fragile future onto a land that remembers every bullet.
Synopsis
In Oklahoma, kindhearted outlaw Brick Willock rescues little Lahoma Gledware and her father Henry from certain death at the hands of his outlaw band. In the course of the rescue, he kills Kansas Kimball, the brother of the outlaws' leader Red Kimball, who vows vengeance against Brick. Brick renounces his life of crime, and after Gledware relinquishes custody of his daughter to marry an Indian princess, the old cowboy gives refuge to the little girl, raising her with the help of neighbor Bill Atkins. Years later Easterner Will Compton comes to Oklahoma to homestead, meets Lahoma and falls in love with her, but is forced to leave by Brick. While visiting Kansas City, Lahoma overhears Kimball plotting to kill Brick by swearing out a phony warrant for his arrest, but she foils his plan. Outwitted, Kimball takes revenge into his own hands and shoots Brick, only to fall in his tracks from Brick's own gun as the old outlaw breathes his last breath. Will returns to console Lahoma and the couple are married.
Review Excerpt
"
The first time I saw Lahoma I was half-drunk on midnight coffee and the flicker of my 16-inch laptop felt like lantern light inside a sod dugout. Within three title cards I forgot the kettle whistling behind me; by the final iris-in I realized this 1920 silent western, shot on shoestring and sun-scalded celluloid, had punched cleaner than any CGI-splattered blockbuster I’d mainlined that year.
Oklahoma as Palimpsest
Director Edgar Lewis doesn’t just record the prairie—he scratches history onto..."
