In this case, the eponymous Jane (Natalie Portman) is quietly devastated when her husband Bill ‘Ham’ Hammond (Noah Emmerich) rides home after an altercation with the fearsome Bishop boys (led by Ewan McGregor), riddled with bullets and barely alive. Worse still, the gang are following Ham back to Jane, with whom they also have history, and the couple’s young daughter Kate (Maisie McMaster). I don’t want to read too deeply into the production shambles behind Jane Got A Gun, although the basics are already known. Gavin O’Connor’s film is fine, but it feels as if some of the less enthusiastic reviews have knocked a star off their rating for the film because it wasn’t directed by Lynne Ramsey. The We Need To Talk About Kevin director quit the production a day before shooting started after falling out with the producers, prompting a seismic shuffle of the cast and crew that saw Michael Fassbender, Jude Law and Bradley Cooper arrive and then depart over a matter of weeks. Furthermore, Edgerton ended up switching roles from Bishop to Dan, and had a hand in rewriting the script. Brian Duffield’s original draft featured on the 2011 Black List and it reads more like one of Tarantino’s Westerns, complete with graphic violence, colourful dialogue and chapter headings, than the significantly rewritten final version on which Edgerton and Anthony Tambakis are co-credited. But while the fiasco of its production might be fascinating to some, Jane isn’t anything like the calamity that its muddled genesis would suggest. Between Portman, Edgerton and McGregor, we have something of a Star Wars prequel reunion and while all three have moved on in the decade since Revenge Of The Sith, this proves again, as if proof were needed, that they’re more than capable when given good material. On sight alone, McGregor is very impressive, overcoming an intrinsically wrong-looking black dye job and some villainous airs straight out of The Perils Of Pauline, to build real malice into his sneering outlaw. Edgerton is also very good, in equal turns tough and pathetic as the weary Dan, whose entry into the story is the basis of a decidedly anti-romantic sub-plot. Although the romantic history between Dan and Jane is alluded to over the course of the story, Jane is ceaselessly loyal to her husband, if regretful of how things went with Dan. As befits a film with noble aspirations for its female protagonist, it needn’t turn into a love story and it really doesn’t. What has survived to this version of the story is the constant implication that Jane’s situation could have been different had she allied with a man other than Ham – on one hand, she could have been happy with the soldier fiancée or miserable and abused with the outlaw, but underpinning her fierce loyalty to her injured husband is the fact that she chose him. She selfishly drafts in Dan after years of never speaking to him, but she’s proud enough to stand up for herself every time it really counts. It’s not romantic, but that’s not to say that it’s unfeeling, and that crucial distinction is the source of the film’s emotional intelligence. Jane Got A Gun doesn’t have Ramsey or Fassbender, but it has a copper-bottomed premise and O’Connor turned out to be a more than capable hand in getting this dryly subversive piece back on track. Westerns are set against the backdrop of a mission of civilisation, taming a vast and complicated land, and while all of the collective production gubbins may have civilised the film to some extent, this is a suitably gritty and lived-in entry into that canon. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.