Any western with the legendary John Wayne is worth a glance. "On Golden Pond" director Mark Rydell's cattle drive opera "The Cowboys" is as offbeat an oater as you'll ever see. When a veteran rancher loses his hired hands because they'd rather pan for nuggets than push steers, he takes on school children to serve as his drovers. The premise is fresh and like nothing John Wayne ever tried during his long career in the cinema. Basically, "The Cowboys" is "Red River" with youngsters. This existential tale of initiation about boys becoming men is memorable because the kids are all interesting characters in their own right. Actually, Rydell and two-time Oscar-nominated scenarists Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr have fashioned a western that is politically incorrect as you imagine. After the villainous Bruce Dern shoots John Wayne multiple times in the back, the kids exact vengeance on Dern and his dastards by killing them all in an ambush. The last thing that you'd expect to see in a John Wayne is children brutalized and then brutalizing men twice their age without a qualm. Robert Surtees lensed this sprawling outdoors saga and even the scenes on the Warner Brothers sound stage in Burbank look spectacular. "Star Wars" composer John Williams provides an orchestral score that enhances not only the suspense but also develops the characters, especially the villains. The scribes borrow from other films. For example, the subplot involving Long Hair (Bruce Dern) who threatens one boy, Dan, is reminiscent of Charles Dickens "Great Expectations." The kids are a tyke-sized collection of "The Magnificent Seven," and the subplot about the outcast Mexican who isn't hired immediately but who tags along in their wake is like Horst Buchholz's young gunslinger in the classic Sturges' film. The boys experience just about everything you can imagine. They ride, rope, curse, shoot, and kill. Colleen Dewhurst has a cameo as a madam. Bruce Dern makes a terrific villain and he told Rydell that he believes he ruined his career when he killed Wayne in a particularly bloody scene.
Review of The Cowboys
