Old man Ewing (Jason Robards) owns a ranch right next to the ranch of Ella (
Jane Fonda). This is a source of two problems: Ewing wants to gobble up most of the land around the two ranches and also wants Ella's ranch; secondly, when Ella was too young to know better, she went to bed with the man, which, many years later, she considers to have been a grievous error on her part. A third problem arises when oil companies begin pressuring both of them to allow drilling on their land, and Ewing won't allow it -- on his or anyone else's land. Before long, war-veteran Frank (
James Caan) enters Ella's life and helps her fight to save her land and her sanity, with added assistance from Dodger (
Richard Farnsworth), an old local who knows the score. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide