John Wayne's The Cowboys

 If you've never seen Mark Ryydell's The Cowboys, this $15 triple pack from Warner's is your yellow brick road to an incredible movie.

The Searchers and Stage Coach get more love than this, and they certainly deserve all the praise, but The Cowboys, for mine, is right up there with them, and features not only one of John Wayne's greatest and most tragic performances, but is a grand and painful story of how boys become men.

I don't write about my love for John Wayne often on this blog, but when I do, I'm at a loss to convey what an incredible actor he was. He made the process look effortless with that trademark swagger and unique delivery style, but, like all good actors, it was the written material that made him shine so brightly.

The Cowboys script, by Irving Ravetch, Harriet Frank , Jr., and William Dale Jennings, sees Wayne taking a group of very green young boys on a tough cattle run. Along the way and over the course of the dusty two month trek they learn life lessons most grown-ups don't learn in fifty years while being tracked by Bruce Dern and his band of criminals. The film also features a touching performance by Roscoe Lee Browne as the company's cook and conscience, and showcases the talents of a very young Robert Carradine.

Made in '72, seven years before Wayne's death, the film includes a surprising amount of killing by children, some totally unexpected plot turns, and a rich John Williams score that sounds more like the early Goldsmith than the later Williams.

Director Mark Rydell also made The Reivers (a ripper), On Golden Pond, The River, and Intersection, but I'm unconvinced that he made anything better than The Cowboys. It's a superb achievement.  Robert Surtees' cinematography also boasts breathtaking day exteriors and beautifully lit night scenes.

Wayne often catches the criticism that he simply played himself in most movies. I say nonsense to that because it assumes that playing yourself would take no focus or discipline. A man is a complex creature, and deciding what part of yourself to draw from to play any character (even yourself!) is an equally complex process. Like every actor, Wayne had a deep and effective process, and that's what made him great, and that's why, when the scripts are good, he's got the screen authority of God.

The quality of all three movies on BluRay is pretty stunning.

Ad Mats For Real Men

This '72 mob movie impressed me when I was ten. I didn't see it at Melbourne's long extinct Chelsea cinema, though; I saw it at the drive-in with my dad. He was a big fan of Bronson, McQueen, and Sean Connery

There are some glaring continuity errors in the movie, but I still appreciate Bronson's performance, and there are some brutal sequences (relatively speaking).


I recently watched this again after I'd watched Dirty Little Billy, one of my favorite American westerns.

I still like it.

Wayne, as usual, is fantastic, possessing a swaggering authority no other actor has ever possessed.

Great poster. Great movie. I saw this for the first time at the Burwood Drive-In in Burwood, Victoria. I called to my dad, held the newspaper up where this poster was ripped from, and pointed to it. He smiled and said: "Saturday night, son."

It wasn't so easy to get him to EuroTrash.

Extremely gritty, enjoyable western based on a novel by Elmore Leonard.

Lancaster is utterly wonderful in this.

I saw this at Melbourne's Metro cinema (as per above ad mat) and wasn't terribly impressed.

Since this screening to my nine year old self, I haven't seen what I'd call a good condition print on VHS or DVD. Perhaps one exists and I'm not aware of it.

What I liked most was the circus setting. Although better exploited in Vampire Circus, I never tire of anything gritty if it's married to Big top shenanigans.