Sam Peckinpah was the first film-maker to try bringing Max Evans' 1961 novel The Hi-Lo Country to the screen. He had several meetings with the author and approached a range of big-name actors (Charlton Heston and Lee Marvin among them), but somehow the project never came to fruition. Few would have guessed that Evans' book would eventually be filmed by a British director.

"Although there are elements that would be at home in a Western, this story is about the transition of this region, and how the characters are able to cope - or, in some cases, are unable to cope - with that change," Stephen Frears says of his film, which is set in the 1940s.

The film's two main protagonists are Pete (Billy Crudup) and Big Boy Motson (Woody Harrelson), old friends who fall out over a woman (Patricia Arquette.) Neither man would look out of place in a Ford or Hawks movie. Their heroism here, Frears believes, lies not in how quick they are on the draw, but in the way they deal with real life. Geoffrey Macnab