The Hired Hand

The Hired Hand is a 1971 American western film directed by Peter Fonda, with a screenplay by Alan Sharp. The film stars Fonda, Warren Oates, and Verna Bloom. The cinematography was by Vilmos Zsigmond, Bruce Langhorne provided the moody film score. The story is about a man returning to his abandoned wife after seven years of drifting from job to job throughout the southwest. The embittered woman will only let him stay if he agrees to move in as a hired hand.

Harry Collings Fonda and Arch Harris Oates are two saddle tramps who have grown weary after seven years of wandering through the American Southwest. Along with a younger companion, Dan Griffen Robert Pratt, they stop off in Del Norte, a ramshackle town in the middle of nowhere, which is run by the corrupt McVey Severn Darden. Harris and Griffen discuss traveling to California to look for work when Collings abruptly informs them he has decided to return to the wife he left years before. Griffen temporarily leaves the two in a bar and goes to buy supplies. Some town thugs shoot him to death out of pure meanness. Collings and Harris escape, but they return that night. Collings shoots McVey in the feet, crippling him.After riding hundreds of miles back to his old house, Collings finds a cold welcome from his wife Hannah Bloom. In order to be allowed to stay, he offers his services simply as a hired hand. Hannah agrees and quickly puts him to work. Gradually, the distrust and unease caused by years of estrangement slip away, and the two begin to become close again. For the first time, Collings feels willing to settle down, but Harris leaves, wanting to see the ocean. ........

Source: Wikipedia