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The Cowboys | Year: 1972 Classification: Western Directed: - Mark Rydell Actors/Actresses: - John Wayne - Roscoe Lee Browne Makes a lie out of the phrase "John Wayne couldn't act!" John Wayne had a rennaissance in the early 70's. His academy award from "True Grit" and a renewed appreciation of his work in the 40's and 50's opened up opportunities for him to stretch his acting legs. His work as Wil Anderson in "The Cowboys" is one of his greatest performances. It is a very moving role of a rancher abandoned by all the grown men he needed to drive his cattle to the railhead. He is forced to turn to school boys to get the job done. He is a hard man whose own sons grew up bad on him and died early, violent deaths. Now he has to become the surrogate father to these young boys. He is simply magnificent. Especially touching is the scene where they bury one of the boys who died in a tragic accident, John Wayne was never finer and shows that the man certainly had the ability to add depth and emotion to a character. The man was a great actor! another great John Wayne movie The Cowboys is another great John Wayne movie, and after The Searchers, might be my favorite movie he has made. Wayne plays a tough rancher who is forced to use boys on a cattle drive. Wayne plays the role very well, tough and sweet, and has a great cast of boys supporting him (including A Martinez and Robert Carradine). Bruce Dern is the villain, and he does a great job in the role, but then this is the type of role Dern is best in. This is also one of the few instances where John Wayne is killed onscreen, and done so by Dern. The whole scene is one of the best I've seen John Wayne in. It's a great movie, unfortunately there aren't many extras on the dvd. There's a small featurette (less than 10 minutes), a few production notes, and bunch of trailers for John Wayne movies. A great "coming-of-age" Western for young and old alike Director Mark Rydell takes the acting and physical talents of veteran and rookie actors alike and melds them into a great cowboy flick. John Wayne, in one of his last films, is his usual bigger-than-life presence as rancher Wil Andersen who is faced with the need to get his cattle to market but without any help to do it. It just so happens that "gold fever" has struck his part of the West and all of the trail riders have turned into gold miners. The only trail hands left to choose from are the 11 boys who attend the local school. Andersen is faced with the challenge of herding both the cattle and the greenhorn cowboys 400 miles to market. Andersen hires a black cook, Jebidiah Nightlinger, to feed the troupe and, after a few short days of learning the "ropes" of cattle herding, they set off on their mission. Along the way, there are some great scenes, especially the night the boys discover the sour mash that Mr. Nightlinger has hidden in his chuckwagon and the scene where the cowboys meet up with a travelling group of prostitutes. Bruce Dern as the evil rustler, Asa Watts, is outstanding as the movie's villan. Dern has that great way of contorting his face and eyes to create that genuiunely creepy style of acting that he's displayed throughout much of his career. In the scene where he captures one of the young cowboys and pumps him for information about the cattle drive, it appears that the young man really is terrified of Dern. By now, the reader of this review probably knows that (for one of the few times in his acting career) John Wayne dies in "The Cowboys". Without going into a lot of plot-revealing details, let me suffice to say that his death does not go unpunished. The boys deliver the cattle to market and become men along the way. As I was watching the film, it dawned on me about halfway through that "The Duke" would have made a great football coach. Many of his lines even sound like things that a Vince Lombardi or Don Shula would say. He starts out rough, gruff, and distant from the boys as they begin the journey, but eventually becomes more of a father, than an employer, to them by his exit from the film. His pride in their accomplishments along the trail is evident in his last scene. While not a classic Western in the mold of "High Noon" or "Shane", "The Cowboys" is a great movie for young and old alike. John Wayne fans will find that it compares favorably to many of The Duke's movies from the '60s and '70s, such as "Chisum", "El Dorado", and "Rio Bravo". HIGHLY RECOMMENDED Buy The Cowboys at Amazon.com Buy posters at Allposters.com Jamster - the latest ringtones for your phone!  Search with Walhello on the Internet on The Cowboys Search with the Priority Search Engine on The Cowboys This page in other languages: Suomeksi | Nederlands | Deutsch
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