Stand by you Woman
Many years earlier Tom Rourke (Greg Evigan - Captive Hearts), a gambler, found Diana McQueen (Daphne Zuniga - Christmas Do-Over) trying to steal from him and so forced her to work for him, using her skills as a con artist and thief to dupe various visitors to town and steal their money. Tired of working for the bullying Tom and sick of ruining people's lives through stealing their money Diana leaves town and heads to Wyoming to pull one final con. That con involves her taking the place of her friend who before she had died from TB was meant to head there as a mail order bride to Beau Canfield (Cameron Bancroft - A Woman's Rage). But there is no way that Tom is going to allow Diana to get away that easily.
Maybe it is just me but "Mail Order Bride" is one of those movies which as soon as the set up is in place you can guess exactly how the rest of the movie is going to play out. As such you could make some guesses as to what is going to happen such as Diana, whilst initially only going to use Tom, ends up falling for this handsome nice guy. At the same time you can hazard a guess that bad guy Tom is going to find out where she has run off to because that always happens. And of course when it comes to the crunch Beau is going to stand up for Diana even though she lied to him. I could go on because "Mail Order Bride" is the sort of movie not made to test audiences by being original but simply made to be easy viewing.
A big part of that comes down to the casting with Daphne Zuniga having fun playing Diana as this woman who has schemed her whole life but now finds herself dealing with having genuine feelings for a man. As for Cameron Bancroft, well he puts on a cowboy hat and delivers plenty of handsome, nice guy charm. As you can guess the characters are not anything special, these are routine characters you will find in lots of other western romantic dramas that you typically find on the Hallmark channel. But there is something pleasant about them and the way in which Zuniga and Bancroft play them.
What this all boils down to is that "Mail Order Bride" is a completely typical made for TV western, romantic, drama and as such is one of those movies which is going to appeal more to an audience who enjoy the sort of movie which doesn't tax their brains by giving them some thing different to think about.
