Lady Lawman

• Written and Directed Brett William Mauser
• April 10, 2021 (US)

The widowed Francis Miller is hired to track a posse of outlaws and must prove she can not only handle herself but the outlaws as well.

I initially passed on Lady Lawman a few times. The clip used on Amazon Prime only made the movie seem okay. And despite being purportedly based on a true story, I could find virtually nothing on the main character. Part of me thinks her exploits may be as real as those of Sybil (or Sibbel) Ludington. More fiction than fact.

In the story Francis Miller (Ryan Lakey Jasso) is a woman who does not conform to how those of her time think women should be. Seeking some extra cash to help her family ranch, she takes the local sheriff up on his offer to track a dangerous outlaw. She also has the hope of stumbling across the people that killed her father and husband in the process.How she thinks this job will lead to vengeance is not discernable. Only dumb luck would make it possible. Yet that is exactly what happens. Dumb luck…

The villain of the story is Richard Andrews (Carlos Leo), an African-American man who owned slaves prior to the Civil War and is apparently quite brutal. As a slave owner he burned all of his slaves alive rather than turn them over to the Union. Now he’s an outlaw who commands extreme loyalty from those that he rides with.

Andrews is just unrepentantly evil. He’s looking out for himself, and he doesn’t care what anybody else thinks. More importantly he can’t understand why people have a problem with him doing anything. It’s rather refreshing. And with that said he was probably the best performer in this whole movie. Leo was like a skilled artist working in a local community theatre.

And that’s the first issue I have with Lady Lawman: the performances. They mostly get to okay at a good moment. The deliveries can be flat and lacking inflection or a general personality for the character being portrayed. The actors often mistake attitude for characteristics.

The directing is amateurish with the camera rather static. There is no style to it. I’ve seen better directed films on YouTube. I understand this is not a big budget production but do something more than what you could get from amateurs.

The action scenes are slow. And that’s putting it nicely. The gunfights are slow like ticking off a checklist. I am sure that is how many are staged just to get the shots but what did not happen with Lady Lawman was editing in post-production to speed things up.

And that is unfortunate because there is some real substance to this. There are discussions of people needing to do the tough things so others can live in peace. There are discussions of right and wrong as well as what constitutes justice. It’s rather impressive for an extremely low budget film.

I was expecting solely to be beaten over the head with themes of female empowerment. While there are elements of that, they’re not beating over your head with that or any message really. They do their best to tell a good story and wrap it all up in that. And when they succeed in that Lady Lawman really works.

And that there is a big problem. There is a great script here. And I mean that. The dialogue is fantastic and the characters are wonderful. Each brings something to the story or a particular discussion they’re having. The problem is, they had no money here. This is done very on the cheap and poorly done at that.

Or maybe the problem is that there are too few people wearing too many hats. There’s nobody to say you shouldn’t do that or more of this or whatever. The driving force(s) of this production have no filter. This is not an issue exclusive to lower budgeted productions where this occurs by necessity. Larger productions with a director fresh off a success can have the same problem. The potential is obvious, but the failure in the execution is as well.

As it is Lady Lawman is a great script hampered by poor directing, a low budget, and poor performances. If you are capable of focusing on the script rather than the overall presentation you’ll enjoy yourself, but if not you will feel bothered that something that could have been special did not become something special.