The cows have it hard in Texas Rangers, a.k.a. Dude, Where’s My Cattle? Alfred Molina’s King Fisher is a moustache-twirling Mexican who goes about offing white women before they can enjoy their new jewelry. It isn’t too long after Mom and Dad croak that Lincoln (James Van Der Beek) joins Leander McNelly’s (Dylan McDermott) re-commissioned Texas Rangers, a posse of slick hipster cowboys that eat together, scout together and, yes, even bathe together. There’s the first-to-die stuttering fool (see Bay, Lurie, Sverák for more), Usher’s fast-talking black man and Ashton Kutcher’s stoner pin-up. It’s only a matter of time before a rich cattle rancher’s home is ransacked and a sexy Mexican whore goes postal on McNelly’s freedom fighters. There isn’t much to Steve Miner’s view of the frontier; romantic entanglements putter, jealousies run dry and familial mourning is all together done away with. Rachel Leigh Cook is ghastly as the moralistic cow rancher’s daughter while Leonor Varela steals the show as Perdita, the frazzled Mexican slut who stabs Robert Patrick’s love-struck terminator before she hitches a ride on a runaway wagon. Daryn Okada’s lush camerawork and Trevor Rabin’s ridiculously fun score are clues that Perdita will never get the lynching she deserves—the kind McDermott’s McNelly might have given her if he had a little Mercedes McCambridge in him.
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