Tough Girls

The title character in “Jane Got a Gun” is Jane Hammond (Natalie Portman), who lives with her young daughter in the New Mexico Territory. The year is 1871. Jane has a husband, Bill (Noah Emmerich), who has been gone awhile; now he returns, half dead, with bullets in his back. He tells her that he has tangled with “the Bishop boys,” who are coming to exact revenge. The sensible course of action, at this point, would be for Jane to get out of there like a jackrabbit. Being more cussed than sensible, however, she stands her ground—farming the child out to a friend for safekeeping, then hunkering down to fortify the homestead and to prepare for attack.