Robert Altman - McCabe & Mrs Miller

It's the turn of the nineteenth into twentieth century. John McCabe, who largely lives off what he is able to win in gambling, has just rode into the relatively new mining town of Presbyterian Church, nestled in the mountains of Washington. He is an intimidating figure to most of the men in town, in large part because of his quiet bravado and the belief they have that he is a gunslinger who recently killed a man. With his money, McCabe opens up some businesses catering to the men in town, including a whorehouse and bathhouse, the former which he sets up with a trio of cheap hookers he purchased from nearby Bear Paw. Shortly thereafter, cockney Brit Constance Miller also arrives into town, she, a whore herself, who makes a proposition to McCabe that she run the whorehouse and bathhouse to her exacting high standards on a fifty/fifty partnership basis with him, a proposition which McCabe eventually accepts. Mrs. Miller is able to make a successful go at the businesses despite her penchant for opium, of which McCabe is unaware. The businesses are so successful that the Harrison Shaughnessy mining company sends two of its representatives to Presbyterian Church to buy all McCabe's holdings in town. McCabe turns them down before he learns from much more streetwise Mrs. Miller that there is a steeper price to pay for going against Harrison Shaughnessy. As such, McCabe may have to use those gunslinging skills he purportedly possesses not only to save his and Mrs. Miller's businesses, but his life as well.