Movies_Westerns

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Director: George Roy Hill
Theatrical running time: 110 mins.

Jan says, "My all-time favorite movie. I see this as so much more than a
mere Western. It's a celebration of derring-do, joy, romance, living
'outside the box,' and persistence in the face of sure annihilation. It's
fabulous escapism at its best, it's funny, and it's the source of
'Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.' "

Opening with a silent "movie" of Butch Cassidy's Hole in the Wall Gang,
George Roy Hill's comically elegiac Western chronicles the mostly true
tale of the outlaws' last months. Witty pals Butch (Paul Newman) and
Sundance (Robert Redford) join the Gang in successfully robbing yet
another train with their trademark non-lethal style. After the pair rests at
the home of Sundance's schoolmarm girlfriend, Etta (Katharine Ross),
the Gang robs the same train, but this time, the railroad boss has hired
the best trackers in the business to foil the crime. After being tailed over
rocks and a river gorge by guys that they can barely identify save for a
white hat, Butch and Sundance decide that maybe it's time to try their
luck in Bolivia. Taking Etta with them, they live high on ill-gotten Bolivian
gains, but Etta leaves after their white-hatted nemesis portentously
arrives. Their luck running out, Butch and Sundance are soon holed up
in a barn surrounded by scores of Bolivian soldiers who are waiting for
the pair to make one last run for it. Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide.

Dances With Wolves (1990)
Director: Kevin Costner
Theatrical running time: 236 mins.

A favorite of Dicksy.

A historical drama about the relationship between a Civil War soldier
and a band of Sioux Indians, Kevin Costner's directorial debut was also
a surprisingly popular hit, considering its length, period setting, and
often somber tone. The film opens on a particularly dark note, as
melancholy Union lieutenant John W. Dunbar (Kevin Costner)
attempts to kill himself on a suicide mission, but instead becomes an
unintentional hero. His actions lead to his reassignment to a remote post
in remote South Dakota, where he encounters the Sioux. Attracted by
the natural simplicity of their lifestyle, he chooses to leave his former life
behind to join them, taking on the name Dances with Wolves. Soon,
Dances with Wolves has become a welcome member of the tribe and
fallen in love with a white woman who has been raised amongst the
tribe, Stands With a Fist (Mary McDonnell). His peaceful existence is
threatened, however, when Union soldiers arrive with designs on the
Sioux land. Some detractors have criticized the film's depiction of the
tribes as simplistic; such objections did not dissuade audiences or the
Hollywood establishment, however, which awarded the film seven
Academy Awards, including Best Picture. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

Rio Bravo (1959)
Director: Howard Hawkes
Theatrical running time: 141 mins.

Jan especially remembers the sizzle between Feathers (Angie
Dickinson) and Sheriff John T. Chance (John Wayne), and
sleepy-eyed Dean Martin and his honeyed voice.

Set in Texas during the late 1860s, Rio Bravo is a story of men (and
women) and a town under siege. Presidio County Sheriff John T.
Chance (John Wayne) is holding Joe Burdette (Claude Akins), a
worthless, drunken thug, for the murder of an unarmed man in a fight in
a saloon -- the problem is that Joe is the brother of wealthy land baron
Nathan Burdette (John Russell), who owns a big chunk of the county
and can buy all the hired guns he doesn't already have working for him.
Burdette's men cut the town off to prevent Chance from getting Joe into
more secure surroundings, and then the hired guns come in, waiting
around for their chance to break him out of jail. Chance has to wait for
the United States marshal to show up, in six days, his only help from
Stumpy (Walter Brennan), a toothless, cantankerous old deputy with a
bad leg who guards the jail, and Dude (Dean Martin), his former
deputy, who's spent the last two years stumbling around in a drunken
stupor over a woman that left him. Chance's friend, trail boss Pat
Wheeler (Ward Bond), arrives at the outset of the siege and tries to
help, offering the services of himself and his drovers as deputies, which
Chance turns down, saying they're not professionals and would be too
worried about their families to be good at anything except being targets
for Burdette's men; but Chance does try to enlist the services of
Wheeler's newest employee, a callow-looking young gunman named
Colorado Ryan (Ricky Nelson), who politely turns him down, saying he
prefers to mind his own business. In the midst of all of this tension,
Feathers (Angie Dickinson), a dance hall entertainer, arrives in town
and nearly gets locked up by Chance for cheating at cards, until he
finds out that he was wrong and that she's not guilty -- this starts a
verbal duel between the two of them that grows more sexually intense as
the movie progresses and she finds herself in the middle of Chance's
fight. Wheeler is murdered by one of Burgette's hired guns who is, in
turn, killed by Dude in an intense confrontation in a saloon. Colorado
throws in with Chance after his boss is killed and picks up some of the
slack left by Dude, who isn't quite over his need for a drink or the
shakes that come with trying to stop. Chance and Burdette keep raising
the ante on each other, Chance, Dude, and Colorado killing enough of
the rancher's men that he's got to double what he's paying to make it
worth the risk, and the undertaker (Joseph Shimada) gets plenty of
business from Burdette before the two sides arrive at a stalemate --
Burdette is holding Dude and will release him in exchange for Joe. This
leads to the final, bloody confrontation between Chance and Burdette,
where the wagons brought to town by the murdered Wheeler play an
unexpected and essential role in tipping the balance. ~ Bruce Eder, All
Movie Guide

Shane (1953)
Producer/Director: George Stevens
Theatrical running time: 117 mins.

A fave of Dewey, who wrote, "'Shane! Come back, Shane!' That was a
good one, too. When one got shot, he looked shot."

The simple story of a Wyoming range war is elevated to near-mythical
status in producer/director George Stevens' Western classic Shane.
Alan Ladd plays the title character, a mysterious drifter who rides into a
tiny homesteading community and accepts the hospitality of a farming
family. Patriarch Joe Starrett (Van Heflin) is impressed by the way
Shane handles himself when facing down the hostile minions of land
baron Emile Meyer (Rufe Ryker), though he has trouble placing his
complete trust in the stranger, as his wife Marion (Jean Arthur) is
attracted to Shane in spite of herself, and his son Joey (Brandon De
Wilde) flat-out idolizes Shane. When Meyer is unable to drive off the
homesteaders by sheer brute strength, he engages the services of
black-clad, wholly evil hired gun Jack Wilson (Jack Palance). The
moment that Wilson shows he means business by shooting down
hotheaded farmer Frank Torrey (Elisha Cook Jr.) is the film's most
memorable scene: after years of becoming accustomed to carefully
choreographed movie death scenes, the suddenness with which
Torrey's life is snuffed out -- and the force with which he falls to the
ground -- are startling. Shane knows that a showdown with Wilson is
inevitable; he also knows that, unintentionally, he has become a
disruptive element in the Starrett family. The manner in which he
handles both these problems segues into the now-legendary "Come
back, Shane" finale. Cinematographer Loyal Griggs imbues this no-frills
tale with the outer trappings of an epic, forever framing the action in
relation to the unspoiled land surrounding it. A.B. Guthrie Jr.'s
screenplay, adapted from the Jack Schaefer novel, avoids the standard
good guy/bad guy clichés: both homesteaders and cattlemen are shown
as three-dimensional human beings, flaws and all, and even ostensible
villain Emile Meyer comes off reasonable and logical when elucidating
his dislike of the "newcomers" who threaten to divest him of his wide
open spaces. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Unforgiven (1992)
Director: Clint Eastwood
Theatrical running time: 134 mins.

A fave of Gary, who says, "The western matures. Good drama, too."

Dedicated to his mentors Sergio Leone and Don Siegel, Clint
Eastwood's 1992 Oscar-winner examines the mythic violence of the
Western, taking on the ghosts of his own star past. Disgusted by Sheriff
"Little Bill" Daggett's decree that several ponies make up for a
cowhand's slashing a whore's face, Big Whiskey prostitutes, led by
fierce Strawberry Alice (Frances Fisher), take justice into their own
hands and put a $1000 bounty on the lives of the perpetrators.
Notorious outlaw-turned-hog farmer William Munny (Eastwood) is
sought out by neophyte gunslinger the Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett)
to go with him to Big Whiskey and collect the bounty. While Munny
insists, "I ain't like that no more," he needs the bounty money for his
children, and the two men convince Munny's clean-living comrade Ned
Logan (Morgan Freeman) to join them in righting a wrong done to a
woman. Little Bill (Oscar-winner Gene Hackman), however, has no
intention of letting any bounty hunters impinge on his iron-clad authority.
When pompous gunman English Bob (Richard Harris) arrives in Big
Whiskey with pulp biographer W.W. Beauchamp (Saul Rubinek) in tow,
Little Bill beats Bob senseless and promises to tell Beauchamp the real
story about violent frontier life and justice. But when Munny, the true
unwritten legend, comes to town, everyone soon learns a harsh lesson
about the price of vindictive bloodshed and the malleability of ideas like
"justice." "I don't deserve this," pleads Little Bill. "Deserve's got nothin' to
do with it," growls Munny, simultaneously summing up the insanity of
western violence and the legacy of Eastwood's Man With No Name. ~
Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Westerns