The Cowboys

"The Cowboys" gives a solid performance by John Wayne, with excellent support from Roscoe Lee Browne and especially Bruce Dern.

John Wayne plays his role well as the aging rancher who needs to get his herd on the trail and has trouble finding help. He shows softer moments than is typical for him, and seems almost wistful at times.

The supporting cast of about a dozen boys who end up helping him do a pretty good job as well. When the film gets under way, the boys make you think you are in for a relatively smooth ride, but some of the later scenes get pretty intense.

Browne has the somewhat trite role of a wisdom-dispensing African-American, but he does have some good lines that he does well with. Whereas many films today might downplay the issue of his skin color, "The Cowboys" has fairly realistic reactions from a variety of people to a black man working in the West.

Bruce Dern comes off as one of the creepiest bad guys in a Western. In early scenes his (unnamed) character tries to pass himself off as smooth and sweet-talking, but eventually his true colors show, and he is downright scary. He has an especially frightening confrontation with one of the boys, and a wild-eyed showdown with John Wayne that really cements him as one of the worst bad guys ever played in a Western.

The story is pretty much by the book, with only one big surprise in a fight near the end. It also takes a little while to get going, but by the first scene with the boys in the corral, it hums along.

On the whole, a good Western with some excellent acting.

Obviously, John Wayne had a long and distinguished career in the movies. Of course, he was merely playing himself time after time. In this movie, that works wonderfully well.

He plays Wil Anderson, a man in his 60s with little else he can do but hire a classroom of boys to help with a cattle drive. This makes for a fun outing for anyone in any age group. Roscoe Lee Browne is well cast here. His scene with Colleen Dewhurst is very well played. Bruce Dern is great, too!

My son, who is a big fan of "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones", pointed out the John Williams music in "The Cowboys"; it is very good indeed.

"The Cowboys" is my choice for the movie to introduce people to John Wayne. It definitely makes you want to see more! Out of four stars, I rate it: ***.5

John Wayne led many a cattle drive, but there's something especially satisfying about this final turn on the trail, alongside ten young boys for what turns out to be a hardnosed yet winning salute to the Duke's legacy of manly comportment.

"It's not how you're buried, it's how they remember you," Wayne's Wil Andersen tells one of his charges, the half-breed Cimarron (A Martinez), and "The Cowboys" is a two-hour rumination on that theme, of how Andersen, a man whose hard-bitten ways cost him two sons, finds a sort of redemption with these boys who come to help him take his cattle 400 miles to Belle Fourche while the only menfolk are either off panning for gold or else aiming to get their fortune in seedier ways.

John Wayne in his post-Oscar years didn't have much to prove, and many of his movies from that time play today as little more than agreeable trips to the well. "The Cowboys" is different. Picking up on the rougher theme of post-"Wild Bunch" westerns, it presents a modern sensibility where people swear and bleed profusely when shot or punched. Wayne might seem out of place, yet he finds the right balance here between his characteristic latter-day gruff humorousness and the sterner stuff we remember from his classic turns in "Red River" and "The Searchers".

The key to Andersen are those dead sons he has buried out in his spread back home. "They went bad on me," is about all he can say on the matter. "Or I went bad on them. I can't figure it out." Seen through that prism, everything Andersen does with his young cowboys makes a lot of sense, right down to the famously grim finale with Bruce Dern, whose memorable "Long Hair" is one of the great Wayne-movie villains.

But there's a lot of joy in "The Cowboys", too. Another scene early on, just as classic, has Andersen deciding to give the boys a lesson with a wild mare, Crazy Alice, only to get taught a lesson in turn by these surprisingly spry youngsters, who each manage to prove themselves to Wil's wry chagrin.

"I hope I haven't ridden all the rough off her!" one offers as he hands back the reins.

"You'll do," Wil replies, about all the affection he gives or they want.

Then there's Jebediah Nightlinger, the cook and only other adult figure on the scene, who tries less hard than Wil to hide his enjoyment of the situation. Hard as it is to imagine "The Cowboys" without Wayne, it's harder to imagine it without Roscoe Lee Browne, whose every utterance has a quality of burnished bronze.

Director Mark Rydell finds the right tempo and look for his film, aided by John Williams' stirring score and Robert Surtees' camera work. Every shot has the quality of a glossy Louis L'Amour cover, majestic pines and grassy hills stretching out into infinity.

About the only thing keeping "The Cowboys" from classic status is an ending which, while satisfying, comes off very pat on reflection. Despite the long time we spend with them, many of the Cowboys themselves lack for individuality, an exception being Robert Carradine, who plays Slim the de facto leader of the kids, and is the real-life son of Wayne's "Stagecoach" co-star John Carradine.

"The Cowboys" wasn't Wayne's swansong, yet it's a stirring valedictory effort all the same, a chance to see an enduring screen legend at his late and glorious apex, showing a new generation, and generations yet unborn, a thing or two about getting it done.

The Cowboys is directed by Mark Rydell and adapted from the novel written by William Dale Jennings; who co-writes the screenplay with Irving Ravetch & Harriet Frank Jr. It stars John Wayne, Roscoe Lee Browne, Bruce Dern and Colleen Dewhurst. John Williams scores the music and Robert Surtees is the cinematographer. Plot sees Wayne as tough cattleman Wil Andersen, who after finding all his cowhands have fled to find their fortune elsewhere, is forced to use a bunch of green teenagers to get his beef to market. It's a journey of some distinction, for Wil, the boys and the villains who lurk on the edges of the frame.

If ever there was a John Wayne picture that was in need of serious critical reevaluation, both as a measure of his acting ability-and quality in film narrative, then The Cowboys is the one. It's a film that has been known to upset the liberal minded, where the ideology at its core has been lambasted as being objectionable in the least. Yet looking at it closely, away from the humour that does exist within, it finds the Duke at his most vulnerable, therefore believable, and at its centre it's a coming of age tale told with cynical coldness. During this cattle drive innocence will be lost, Andersen is tough and a disciplinarian, yet he's always a benevolent father figure. Wil himself hit the cattle drive trail at 13, he knows the pains and perils of such a task. He also knows that boys need to become men, especially out here in the wilderness. I'd be disappointed in a piece of Western genre cinema if it glossed over this fact. And The Cowboys doesn't, it has a sting in its tail, the trick is that the boys are not judged by how Wil taught them, but defined by a turn of events that calls on them to "man" up. The actions of another being the catalyst for childhood's ending.

Robert Surtees' photography paints a beautiful picture, it's pastoral, broad and appealing, but crucially it doesn't make it poetic. These young lads are entering the unknown, each section of God's great land is beautiful to us, but dangerous to them. It's an overlooked point that critics of the film ignore, that of Wil Andersen not leading these boys on a romantic trip thru the colourful terrain. It's not romantic, it's dangerous, and it's credit to Surtees that he achieves both sides of the coin; beauty and peril in the same frame. The young actors are, expectedly, a mixed bunch, but there's nothing here to be overtly negative about. Roscoe Lee Browne is terrific, his shift from wry observationalist to "Mother Hen" is handled with great skill, and Bruce Dern is memorable in more ways than one. The complaints come from not enough screen time for Colleen Dewhurst, who playing a bordello madame positively threatens to send the film's rating thru the roof (and the male viewers temperature's), while the running time is simply too long-too episodic-and quite frankly, unnecessary.

The Cowboys is not a perceived John Wayne macho based fantasy movie, it has meaning, depth, bravery and a first class performance from the Duke himself. 8/10

...In which an aging man is forced to hire boys to get his cattle to market. The environment poses many difficult problems, especially for the boys who are trying to grow up and for Wil Andersen (Mr. Wayne's character) who is trying to protect the boys, especially from a group of low-lifes who want to steal the cattle. Mr. Wayne is at his very best, because he pulls no punches and the boys are able to convey their awkwardness and confusion. The ending, which is highly unexpected, is, in its' way, perfection. This film should be both famous and celebrated - it's an unusual achievement for a Western. But then this one is far more than a Western.