Thehibikiew Not even bad in a good way

Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Orla Zuniga It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

MattyGibbs This is a typically glossy late John Wayne western. Wayne plays Cahill a US Marshall whose job has meant that he has somewhat neglected his kids. When they decide to rob a bank with the help of George Kennedy and his gang they find themselves in trouble. John Wayne looks pretty tired in this although he still has a great screen presence. The film is essentially about a man's relationship with his sons and as such there is relatively little action. This is itself is no bad thing but it's just that the plot is a little too thin to carry the film. As a result it's just intermittently interesting mainly when George Kennedy is on screen. This is John Wayne in reflective mood but it's just not comparable to his great performance in the brilliant 'The Shootist'. Overall although watchable there's just not enough of interest here to make this anything but an average western.

Edgar Allan Pooh . . . John Wayne's title character confesses in CAHILL: UN!TED STATES MARSHAL. In the context of this story, that's a gross understatement. He's raised his 11- and 17-year-old sons to be arsonists, armed bank robbers, and first-degree murderers, by any version of The Law which has ever been enforced anywhere in America. The older boy also is a racist bigot. But instead of apprehending these Bad Seeds (as required of him by his oath of office), Marshal Cahill assassinates the only three witnesses to the perfidy of his Crime Family, and connives to show his sons the sort of "family law" favoritism once enjoyed by Saddam Hussein's boys. When he's not rewriting the Law Books for the benefit of the Cahill Clan, J.D. leads his Native American best friend to his doom, and enjoys shackling (in irons) the only Black character in this tawdry tale. Throw in the lame Five and Dime Store owl "special" effect in the cemetery scene, and the continuous product placement for Big Tobacco, and CAHILL becomes a poster child for the Un-American Activities Committee. Worse of all is Wayne's futile effort to besmirch our memory of a far better flick, THE OXBOW INCIDENT. Texas always has executed a half-dozen innocent poor folks annually, right into the 21st Century. Why is "The Duke" going soft here? He'll never be Edward G. Robinson in ALL MY SONS. If Hitler and Mussolini were two of his boys, John would have found some loophole to get them off, too.

Jonathan Roberts 'Cahill' is a film which follows US Marshal J.D. Cahill, played by John Wayne, on the trail of a group of bank robbers. To Cahill's surprise, he finds out that his two sons were implicit in the robbery, and he feels compelled to adapt his usual no-nonsense form of law enforcement. The film doesn't have one of the strongest Western plots, and it doesn't contribute anything substantial to the wider genre (especially for a 1973 film), but a number of qualities in 'Cahill' greatly benefit this title. McLaglen's film contains some of the most enjoyable cinematography I've ever seen in a Western, and I'd say that it almost compares to some of Sergio Leone's material in this regard. Moreover, the supporting cast is pretty great: George Kennedy portrays the menacing antagonist, and delivers a performance comparable to Lee Van Cleef's Angel-Eyes ('The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'); Neville Brand also shines as Cahill's war-chief accomplice, Lightfoot; and lastly, Clay O'Brien, around the age of 12 in 'Cahill', delivers an admirable performance. The film, for the reasons given, shouldn't be considered alongside the likes of 'Once Upon a Time in the West' or 'High Noon', but in its own right can be very enjoyable, and I was profoundly surprised when I saw that it only had a 6.5 IMDb rating. I consider it one of Wayne's stronger films, and I think it does a substantially better job than some of the other films from Wayne's later years, such as 'Big Jake' and 'Rooster Cogburn'.

jldmp1 There are few actors who define national attitudes. Wayne is one of them. He matured in a simpler time, when white hat vs. black hat was expected, not just acceptable. He didn't need to be anything more than an archetype, his presence was cartoonish...the hapless bad guys were equally cartoonish. His triumphs affirmed who we were as Americans.He was displaced by flinty Clint, the iconoclast. But Clint, for the most part, also faced cartoon bad guys.The current postmodern hero archetype is Willis in the "Die Hard" narrative -- the ironic hero now has to face off with fully dimensional villains. Most studios now invest in getting the perceived 'best villain', and all other considerations form a line behind that.So it's shocking to see this today...the mind has to jump back not one, but two generations and adjust.This is a failure on many levels. The visual storytelling is distinctly uncinematic -- it would pass for a "Little House on the Prairie" TV show. The acting and props are horrible. Wayne tries to stay aloof, brushing aside everyone in his path with smoking barrels and one-liners. He tries to validate for us that "a man can't ignore his duty".By 1973, this no longer worked. Whatever Wayne had built up for us in "True Grit" or even the "Green Berets" was lost forever...like sand against a tsunami caused by Vietnam and all of its flotsam and jetsam that rushed at us(My Lai, Kent State, the bombing of Cambodia, etc.) We were rapidly becoming a nation of quiche-eaters.