For someone who made his name on the small screen, Thirtysomething creator Edward Zwick certainly has the eye for the big picture when it comes to cinema. Glory, the moving story of a black regiment during the American Civil War, was suitably rousing, but it was with this fabulous throwback to the epic dramas of old that he really hit his stride. Anthony Hopkins plays stern patriarch William Ludlow, whose disgust at the actions of his own government during the Indian Wars leads him to bring up his three sons (Brad Pitt, Aidan Quinn and Henry Thomas) on a remote ranch in the Montana mountains. However, their idyllic life is thrown into turmoil by outside events and by the arrival of the beautiful Julia Ormond. With a sweep that encompasses the passing of the Old West, the First World War, ivory hunting in Africa and Prohibition, this could have easily turned into a sprawling mess, but Zwick handles the various subplots with deceptive ease and fashions a poetic hymn to the values of loyalty and family ties, which only occasionally slips into melodramatic cliché. His skill in marshalling large casts is illustrated by the truly outstanding performances that he draws from the talent on display: Hopkins is suitably craggy as the father, Pitt believably intense as the wayward middle son and Ormond delightfully unforced as the beauty who entrances the whole family. The real star, however, is John Toll's Oscar-winning cinematography, which is equally at home with the stunning beauty of the mountainous terrain and the killing fields of war-torn France.

In early 20th-century Montana, Col. William Ludlow lives on a ranch in the wilderness with his sons, Alfred, Tristan, and Samuel. Eventually, the unconventional but close-knit family are bound by loyalty, tested by war, and torn apart by love, as told over the course of several decades in this epic saga.