A puzzler

evening1

This Robert Mitchum vehicle is a decidedly mixed bag.

It's always a treat to watch the consummate actor strut his stuff. Indeed, this movie does have some excellent dialogue, and one can't dispute that bucking broncos and bulls make for powerful viewing. It's in the film's characterizations that it falters.

It's a letdown to discover that Mitchum's Jeff McCloud turns out to be -- excuse me while I yawn -- just another creep who covets another guy's wife. And his behavior in the movie's final fifth: Are we to conclude that the philosopher-cowboy was really just suicidal all along? Or, is he Christ-like, sacrificing his own life so that Wes (Arthur Kennedy) and Louise (Susan Hayward) can be saved?

The movie begins strongly, as we observe Jeff return to his boyhood home and exchange words with an older bachelor now living there.

"I like a place that's lonely, quiet," the grizzled guy tells Jeff. "Marriage -- it's lonely, but it ain't private." (Ain't that the truth!)

However, the movie dispenses with its early interest as we realize the homestead's just a plot device to allow Jeff to meet tenuously bonded Wes and Louise.

The movie bogs down terribly when we're thrust into the company of the rodeo wives. We never get to know Louise in any depth here, so why would we care about her cronies? Although one does offer words that may resonate for some: "For three years, all Jeff McCloud had to do was whistle, and I'd come runnin'. He stopped whistlin', and I stopped runnin'." (Oh, yeah, I've been there!)

This film revisits the shopworn theme of: "Why must men abandon their dreams in order to settle down with women?" Or, as Jeff lays it out, "I just wanna see one guy in this world get what he wants."

It isn't that Louise's helicopter wife doesn't make some sense. (Can't deny that -- I'm the mother of boys!) Still, it's all laid out heavy-handedly. We can easily foresee that someone's gonna get hurt, or worse, in the rodeo ring. In the end, the only intrigue arrives in who's the casualty, and why.

"Hope's a funny thing," Jeff opines along the way. "You can have it, even when there ain't no reason for it." (True, dat!)

score 4/10

evening1 22 November 2020

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw6298214/