Masked men led by Nathaniel Reed (Trace Adkins) rob a stagecoach driven by Calhoun (Kim Coates). Some years later, Nathaniel is three months behind on his mortgage. His wife Laura Lee Reed (Michelle Harrison) is sick. Former running mate Frank Bell arrives with news of another former mate being killed after tortured for information. Despite the warning, Nathaniel refuses to run. Calhoun is now a Marshall and arrives with Bonnie Mudd looking to capture him alive. In the gunfight, Calhoun kills Laura Lee. Nathaniel goes back to robbing with Frank and another mate Sid (Judd Nelson).

My first complaint may seem petty but it is important. I don't like some of the gunshot sounds especially inside the house. They sound soft almost like a cap gun. They need more power. The second annoying thing is the need to make Nathaniel the hero of the story. He insists on not hurting people during the robberies. It's such a weak and obvious move. He's almost a gentleman in the way that he's written. While Trace Adkins has functional acting skills, it is nowhere deep enough to be an emotional performance. All in all, this is not exciting. It is not insightful. It is not that interesting other than getting me to skim through Nathaniel Reed's wiki page.

Nathanial Reed (Trace Adkins) is a gentleman stagecoach robber. In the first scene he puts out the eye of Calhoun (Kim Coates) a US Marshal. The story picks up three year later with Reed being married and civilized and Calhoun out to kill Reed. Circumstances turns Reed back to robbing stagecoaches with his old gang Now there was a historical Nathanial Reed, aka Texas Jack who robbed stagecoaches. The story in this film looks nothing like his history found on-line. Sid (Judd Nelson) may be the only one that was historical besides the Dalton. The story and acting was wooden. The story line was predictable, probably because most of it wasn't true. This must be the Saturday morning version.

Guide: No swearing, sex, or nudity.

It must be an unwritten rule somewhere that popular singers must at least once during their career appear in a movie Western. Such disparate personalities as Bobby Darin ("Gunfight in Abilene"), Mick Jagger ("Ned Kelly"), and even David Bowie ("Il Mio West") all appeared in one, mostly with mixed results. With country singers, appearing in a Western seems made to order, as folks like Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson appeared in a fair share of their own.

So I guess it turned out to be Trace Adkins' turn in "Stagecoach: The Texas Jack Story". Quite honestly, he probably should stick with his forte because this flick left much to be desired. It's got the basics down OK, but the delivery is pretty flat and the flashback stuck into the middle of the story disrupts some of the continuity. While watching, I never for a minute believed that Laura Lee (Michelle Harrison) was dead during the shootout at the Reed ranch, even if Frank Bell (Claude Duhamel) had sworn up and down on a stack of Bibles. The whole idea just wasn't presented with a modicum of credibility.

Even the way Texas Jack got his name came across as a dubious proposition. It came about when Nate Reed (Adkins), Frank Bell, and Sid Dalton (Judd Nelson) got wasted on a couple quarts of Apple Jack, and in their drunken daze they came up with the connection between Nate's home state and their choice of rotgut. I guess it could have been worse, they could have been drinking brandy.

And then there was the final showdown. I liked the way Nate/Texas Jack shot the rope that Marshal Calhoun (Kim Coates) rigged to hang Sid Dalton, but then, instead of the two gunmen facing off against each other, it's the banker (John Emmett Tracy) who foreclosed on the Reed farm who came forward to make the save by shooting Calhoun. It almost seemed like a let down since it was Texas Jack's story, not the Ballad of Hank Holliday.