This Rooster is a turkey

dimplet

Now that the two stellar co-stars are long gone, the truth can be told:

Rooster Cogburn is turkey, a formulaic film designed by the marketing department, written by a writer paid by the word, directed by a producer who was faking it.

Some posters praise the chemistry between Wayne and Hepburn. What chemistry? They seem to be reading their lines off a Teleprompter, and in a great hurry.

This trivia tidbit tells it all:

-- Director Stuart Millar insisted on so many takes that eventually John Wayne snapped, "God damn it Stuart, there's only so many times we can say these awful lines before they stop making any sense at all." --

A better director might have been able to get truer performances out of these great stars, but Millar, a fine producer but apparently a talentless director, got little more than worn pennies. A good director would have told them to slow down, breathe, react and interact. Or just let these stars alone.

There's not much of a plot, and the writer doesn't do much of setting up the relationship; Hepburn just suddenly decides to tag along with Wayne, after the promised posse just happens to not show up, and Wayne puts up very little argument against what should have been absolutely against his code. So the setup has little credibility to begin with.

The comparison with African Queen is obvious, too obvious, complete with a ride down the rapids. It sets Rooster Cogburn a very high standard to live up to, and it falls flat. It looks like some movie execs figured it was a can't-fail formula. In African Queen there was some tension in the initial relationship between Hepburn and Bogart, two odd fish brought together, but both transform the other, so you get personality development in the film.

But in Cogburn there is no personality development, and way too much chatter that makes you want to fall asleep. Hepburn is constantly spouting platitudes and homilies, while Wayne has little more than cornball lines.

The other movie this inevitably gets compared with is The Shootist, Wayne's next and last film with Lauren Bacall (ironically, Bogart's long, faithful wife.) Here, Wayne showed he could still act, and there was real chemistry between Wayne and Bacall. I suspect when Bacall looks out the window crying, the tears were real, though she may have also been thinking of Bogie, who, like Wayne, died of lung cancer.

By the 1970s the problem was not that audiences were tired of Westerns so much as that it was hard to find new angles on this genre. Cogburn tries, but needed a less routine plot. Rooster Cogburn falls into the "end of the cowboy era" Western, with the judge firing him for killing too many bad guys, but fails to develop the theme.

The Shootist, on the other hand, succeeds wonderfully. Like Westerns at their best, it uses the genre to tell the story of a man dying of cancer, alone in a world that no longer has any use for gunslingers, who did good but was hated by almost everyone. You see some similarities in "Monte Walsh" decades later. It is the movie Rooster Cogburn tried to be.

In short, a great Western transcends its genre. Rooster Cogburn, unfortunately, barely rises above a B movie, even with the heavy lifting of its stars.

The low point in the movie is a plastered Wayne doing skeet shooting and never missing, but who can't stand up on his own, and then drives off with a wagon full of nitroglycerin, which could have blown up even with the most careful, sober handlers. The movie would have been better off if it had.

Cogburn is full of such improbable details. Why are they hauling bottles of nitroglycerin when there are also crates labeled dynamite? Dynamite, invented in 1867, is stable in transport, and made nitroglycerin, which is extremely unstable and dangerous, obsolete.

Obviously, based on the movie's rating, there are fans of John Wayne who will watch anything he's made. But fans of Katherine Hepburn will be appalled, for Rooster Cogburn is a disgrace to her memory. It is by far the worst movie she ever made; I can't think of anything even close.

If you imagine seeing this movie without knowing who the two stars are, what you are left with is a lethargic, overly long chase with some of the most atrocious dialog every committed by a major studio. The script is garbage that leaves a bad taste long after seeing it. So, minus the stars, this movie would rate somewhere between a 4 and a 2. It is really that bad.

Still, John Wayne and Katherine Hepburn could have been great in a Western together. I would have loved to have seen them in Going' South, instead of Jack Nicholson and Mary Steenburgen, especially in that scene with the brass bed and ropes.

Hmmmm. You know, that's what Rooster Cogburn needed: for the Duke to tie Hepburn up and stick a gag in her mouth.

score 3/10

dimplet 29 April 2011

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2421372/