After a hard-won journey west, a trio of frontier women remain profoundly unsettled, broken by an inhospitable landscape. When none of the local men will lift a finger, Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank) volunteers to return the women to Iowa and enlists half-dead coot George Briggs (Tommy Lee Jones) to help beat an eastern retreat. A richly nuanced and tonally varied tale of everyday people failed by the frontier, THE HOMESMAN is one of the most neglected major films of the last decade, and a vindication of Jones's directorial career a decade after his first feature, THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA.