[1] Jeff Bridges and Sam Waterston star as two cattle rustlers in modern-day Livingston, Montana, who plague a wealthy ranch owner, played by Clifton James.

The film also stars Harry Dean Stanton, Richard Bright, Elizabeth Ashley, Maggie Wellman, Patti D’Arbanville, and Slim Pickens as the aging detective Henry Beige hired to find the rustlers.

Jimmy Buffett contributed the music, and performed "Livingston Saturday Night" with alternate lyrics within the film in a scene set at a country and western bar.

Together, more out of boredom than anything else, they have begun rustling cattle, cutting them up with a chainsaw and paying bills with fresh meat in lieu of cash.

Cora is so bored that she tries to catch the eye of her husband's dim ranch hands, Burt and Curt, but she can't seem to work up much interest on their part.

Jack and Cecil continue to single out Brown's cattle, even kidnapping "Basehart of Bozeman Canyon", his US$50,000 prize bull (equivalent to $283,117 in 2023), for ransom.

A legendary stock detective who once served time on a prison farm for rustling, Beige turns out to be a feeble old fool who doesn't seem to be interested in anything except watching TV and being waited on hand and foot by his beautiful niece, Laura, who is almost sickeningly sweet.

Burt intends to use his rustling profits to take an expensive vacation in Mexico, but Curt has chosen to propose marriage to Laura.

For the final scene, the crew traveled to Deer Lodge, Montana to film the movie-ending sequence where the two characters are on horses at the prison ranch with the sign that reads Rancho Deluxe.