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Tied with "Junior Bonner" as my favorite rodeo movie, this typically brooding film from Nicholas Ray deals with typically Ray themes of love and loss as personified by a typical Ray hero, emotionally and physically scarred bronc rider Jeff McCloud. His failed efforts to recapture his youthful greatness as well as to forge a meaningful connection with a woman are the stuff of tragedy, especially when such efforts are resolutely non sentimental nor taken so seriously as to overwhelm McCloud's generous fund of sarcasm and self deprecation. In other words, quite a performance from Robert Mitchum, which should have earned him at least an Oscar nomination, say the one that went to his co star Arthur Kennedy for the sappy "Bright Victory", to say nothing of hammy Frederick March in "Death Of A Salesman" (which, on the stage, featured Kennedy as March's son. But I digress). Beyond Mitchum's wonderful performance, however, the film is less compelling. Ray's penchant for casting urban east coasters like Kennedy, Frank Faylen, Lorna Thayer and, of course, Susan Hayward as good ol boys/gals who hail from places like Big Spring Texas or sling hash in a tamale joint is, to put it kindly, less than completely credible. And running through the entire film is a vein of sexism and anti marriage tropes that undercut the central relationship between Mitchum and Hayward. It's as if Ray and his cadre of screenwriters (including misogynist David Dortort, creator of the anti woman tv series, "Bonanza") were in the background jeering "Sucker" as Mitchum strives to have a future with Hayward. Give it a B plus.
score 8/10
mossgrymk 5 December 2020
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw6340021/ |
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24-2-2021 00:06:07