AVClub: The post-Civil War Western Jane Got A Gun wastes no time getting to its premise. Early on, Jane Hammond (Natalie Portman) and her young daughter spy husband and father Bill (Noah Emmerich) approaching their modest home from a distance, on horseback. They’re excited to see him, until distress flashes across Jane’s eyes and Bill promptly slumps over and falls off his horse. It turns out he’s shot up with half a dozen bullets, just barely making it home alive. This brief sequence proceeds with an efficiency bordering on truncation; lingering a little bit on Bill’s slumped posture, or on Portman as she realizes not all is right, could have drawn out the moment effectively.
