the modern use of the western movie , and the western genre has almost evaporated . even cowgirls get the blues and wild wild west are some of the most recent entries , both of them were bad , and this one is coming right along to join them . what starts out like a promising desert film ( martin scorsese is one of the producers ) turns into boring drech . pete calder ( crudup , who was steve prefontaine in without limits ) is new to hi-lo , new mexico . he's here to start his cattle business and quickly makes friends with , oh , the western version of woody harrelson ( and , what a surprise , he's played by woody harrelson ) his name is big boy and he's in the same business . the two men constantly go to the bar , and celebrate the death of a man that they beat in poker . when mona ( patricia arquette ) crosses through both of their lives , they are both lovestruck and each of them begin their own private affairs . the men struggle to keep their bonds alive while they are constantly drunk , herding cattle , and making crude sexual references . ( if this doesn't sound like a classic western you're right . ) the film follows the two men's lives until one character dies , by the time we get there , we don't really care . there are three problems in the hi-lo country . one , harrelson seems to have his role written exactly for him . rather than seeing harrelson's big boy character when i looked on the screen , i saw woody harrelson playing the same type of woody-ized character that he always plays . this also goes for arquette , who's role seems patricia-ized for her and reminded me constantly of her alice character in lost highway . two , the film is boring . so boring in fact , that i believe my minutes of film to yawn ratio is 6 : 2 . three , the film plays in no particular order , showing us a handful of random events that don't have any meaning to what happens in the conclusion . add some sappy drama , and you've got another bad western , the hi-lo country gets * 1/2 stars . 
