The Last Rodeo Show ...

ElMaruecan82

On the surface, "Junior Bonner" has everything to please a fan of the New Hollywood period: from the panoramic shots of Arizonian landscapes to characters belonging to a dying breed, as to complete the authentic end-of-an-era feel. Movies like "Junior Bonner" resonate like tender and poignant eulogies to a certain idea of America, begging to be dusted off in our cynical money-driven days.

And unsurprisingly, "Junior Bonner" comes from the most defining artisan of that era: Sam Peckinpah, the maverick director who borrowed from John Ford and Huston, before his very work would be revered as much as his glorious predecessors. Using his favorite setting, the Old West, and populating his films with true-to-life people, his movies poetically chronicled the struggle of men trying to play in old fields with the games' new rules. Their imminent exit, whether natural or not, is both an exhilaration and inspiration for us to express the most repressed appetites devouring our souls, before wisely leaving.

What I just described now was the mindset while watching "Junior Bonner", the story of a rodeo player with a personal score to settle with the most dangerous bull of the show (a black one, naturally). The film opens with a sumptuously edited rodeo sequence concluding with Junior falling before the crucial eight seconds. I knew they'd meet again, but twenty minutes later, I had already forgotten about the bull and focused more on Junior's personal life in Prescott (Arizona) and the apparent dislocation of his family in which he plays the role of a passive observer. At that point, I just waited for him to get out of his laconic detachment and play a more active role, not that I didn't want to see his eventual triumph over the bull, but I didn't care.

I didn't care because there were so many premises of great subplots in "Junior Bonner" but it seemed like Peckinpah was never quite sure in which field to play. Take one of his greatest trademarks: the editing, while it's pertinent for the first and last rodeo sequence (with a honorable mention to the stunt doubles who did a great job by hiding their faces from the camera), the same editing is randomly used in other parts such as a weird confrontation with a bulldozer destroying the house of Junior's father Ace, and an embarrassingly dizzying fight sequence in a bar. Over-edited or awkward are the most diplomatic word I can use.

There is one scene though where Peckinpah's touch works. It happens during a 4th July celebration, when suddenly, both Junior and Ace (Robert Preston) gets on a horse and escapes from the parade to have a beer-driven father-and-son discussion in a deserted place. Some moments like that redeem the film, and God, I wished they were more. There was something in Preston's performance that reminded me of the character portrayed by Ben Johnson in "The Last Picture Show", Sam the Lion, and indeed, there was something of a lion, in that old coot of a man, mourning a vanished existence, and still holding his last hopes on his dream to emigrate in Australia, breed sheep and find gold… like the good old days, as it's implied.

Preston's revival of that Old West feel helps us to understand through the father, the son's personality. And while Preston alone could have carried the film, the film also shines from Ida Lupino's aura as Elvira, the struggling mother who accepted her husband's lust for women, and lack of responsibility and resigned to what life could offer us. Her constantly sad-looking eyes are those of a woman who suffered a lot, but without adversity drying heart out. And the pay-off of these two great performances, which would have been Oscar-worthy had the film been more ambition, occurs in the saloon scene where the flirtatious Preston confronts his ex-wife and can't refuse her the first dance. The chemistry between Lupino and Preston is so intense and believable, it almost make you forget this is a McQueen's film.

And the family portrait is completed by the closest character to an antagonist, the brother Curly, played by Joe Don Baker who became a rich entrepreneur and real-estate agent. Curly embodies the destruction of the frontier spirit by capitalism, after it swept off the Native civilization, a redundant theme in Peckinpah's film. Curly could help both Bonner and Ace, financially, but we understand these men of honor would never surrender to the very system that destroyed their spirit. So many great themes the film tackles, but while we expect more human depth to come out of these interactions, the film gets back to its earlier point and doesn't leave our hearts much to be hooked on. "Junior Bonner" features some cool-looking shots and magnificent performances but for some reasons, Peckinpah didn't know whether it was a rodeo film or a family drama he had to male.

That hesitation probably explains some weirdly inexcusable scenes, poorly directed from Bloody Sam' standards, a fight scene where you can see some extras laughing or possibly the most fake-looking punches in any film. The worst thing is not that the film is overly directed, sometimes, it's the total opposite. It's possible to enjoy McQueen's magnetic presence, the solid casting and the whole nostalgic atmosphere but not without ignoring these flaws. And it's a real shame that the film doesn't quite work, because Peckinpah could have assembled the two subjects. Rodeo could have been a way to show how cowboys' traditions became reduced to a bunch of crowd-pleasing games, instead of inserting that personal story with the bull, which sounded like an artificial plot device, with a predictable conclusion.

It's just as if Peckinpah was in a rush to finish the film, as if his own material was like a bull trying to eject him. Sometimes, the film resist, sometimes it falls, and you can ever hear the buzzing.

score 7/10

ElMaruecan82 20 September 2013

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2872442/