Heaven's Gate

Directed by award-winning Michael Cimino, Heaven's Gate is based on the real range war that occured in Wyoming during the 1890's. It is the moving story of the friction that developed between the East European immigrants and the ruthless American empire-builders who wanted to eliminate them. In 1870, James Averill (Kris Kristofferson), from a well-to-do East European family graduates from Harvard, expecting a bright future and seeing a useful service in protection of poor and exploited immigrants from Eastern Europe. Some twenty years later, now Marshal of Johnston County Wyoming, Averill arrives in the cattlemen's town of Casper. It is here that he discovers that the cattlemen's leader Frank Canton (Sam Waterston) intends to take a mercenary army into Johnston County and is intent on destroying the immigrant population, who are trying to establish homesteads within that area. Pre-warned by Averill, the immigrants ride out on masse to meet the mercenaries and when the pitched battle turns in favour of the immigrants, Frank Canton is forced to bring in the US Army in an attempt to bring and early settlement to the hostilities. Beautifully photographed, with perfect period reproduction, this is the first time that the unabridged version of Heaven's Gate has ever been available in the U.K. © United Artists Corp