The Jack Bull (1999)

  This might as well have been called The Law of Unintended Consequences.  Here's how it goes:  A cattle rancher named Ballard (L.Q. Jones) is pissed about the push for statehood in the Wyoming Territory because it will fuck up his attempts to buy all the land.  He bitches about it in public and asks the local horse trader, Myrl (John Cusack), his opinion.  Myrl answers honestly, unintentionally embarrassing Ballard.  In retaliation, Ballard puts up a toll gate over the road Myrl uses to take his horses to market.  The rate is exorbitant and Myrl is forced to leave two prize stallions and his Crow farmhand, Billy (Rodney A. Grant), at the gate as surety.  When he returns, the two horses have been reduced to shells of their former selves through deliberate mistreatment and Billy is nowhere to be found.  Later, we learn that Ballard's henchmen beat Billy and set their dogs on him.  Incensed, Myrl looks for legal redress but the judge is in Ballard's pocket.  Myrl's wife Cora (Miranda Otto) goes to Cheyenne to take his petition to the Attorney General (Jay O. Sanders).  Due to an unfortunate combination of circumstances unintentionally caused by Ballard's henchmen, Cora dies.  Thus freed from his Voice of Reason, Myrl takes the law into his own hands and begins to hunt Ballard.  He sells his ranch and offers a salary to anybody who would ride with him.  Ballard runs to Cheyenne to beg help from the Governor (Scott Wilson), who is preoccupied with the statehood delegates.  Myrl follows and unintentionally jeopardizes the pending statehood he espoused with his quest for justice.  The governor signs an agreement of amnesty, then freaks out when he is told that unintentionally absolves Myrl of two counts of murder.  To save face, they find a way to revoke the amnesty and put Myrl on trial.  Now he and Ballard both must face the consequences of their actions.  All this because one dude was a douche and the other one wouldn't let it go.

Good Lord, this movie was depressing.  Even for a Western.  It was originally a made-for-HBO movie and has a fairly impressive cast of people whose faces you'd recognize if not their names.  I love John Cusack but he wasn't exactly a perfect fit as a cowboy.  John Goodman played the judge in Cheyenne and completely stole the show, despite only having a fraction of the screen time.  John C. McGinley plays another of Myrl's farmhands and overacts like usual but he'll never be as good as he was in Scrubs to me.