SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Cleveronix A different way of telling a story

Billie Morin This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Brooklynn There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

jacobs-greenwood Directed by Delmer Daves, and adapted from Frank Harris's book My Reminiscences as a Cowboy by Dalton Trumbo and Edmund North, this Western is worth a look despite the odd casting which includes Jack Lemmon in the title role as Harris, and Dick York as a womanizing trail hand named Charlie.Glenn Ford is hardly out of place as the hard nosed cattle drive master, Tom Reese. Marlon Brando's wife Anna Kashfi plays Maria Vidal, the Mexican woman who's the object of Harris's affections; Donald Randolph plays her disapproving father Senor Vidal. Brian Donlevy plays a stereotypical quick draw lawman, Doc Bender, who joins the cattle drive as a trail hand because he's tired of everyone gunning for him. Victor Manuel Mendoza plays Reese's dependable right hand man Paco, aka Ramrod. World War II film veteran Richard Jaeckel plays Paul Curtis, another trail hand whose careless act with a rattlesnake leads to the death of a wagon driver, played by an uncredited Strother Martin. King Donovan plays another veteran trail hand, Joe Capper. William Lyon and Al Clark earned an Academy Award nomination for Editing.At the end of a long cattle drive, Tom Reese (Ford) and his crew descend upon a Chicago hotel whose manager, Mr. Fowler (Vaughn Taylor) is prepared for them. He informs his newest employee, Frank Harris (Lemmon), that everyone on the second floor of the hotel must be relocated for Reese and company. Frank is reluctant to do this because he's fallen in love with one of the occupants in a suite on that floor, Maria Vidal (Kashfi), daughter of Senor Vidal (Randolph). However, Frank had expressed his affections for Maria in a poem and her father had intercepted it. Wanting none of these entrapments for his daughter, Senor Vidal decides that they must leave anyway. On the way out of the hotel, cattleman Vidal greets his former acquaintance Tom Reese, and the two tentatively agree to a future business arrangement. Reese is used to getting what he wants from his men and with his money, and is impatient with anything but the very best service from the hotel's employees. While his men party the night away, Reese gambles away so much of his money that he excuses himself at the poker table in order to pay his hotel bill, before he's completely busted. Frank, who'd earlier expressed his grandiose ideas about becoming a cowboy to Reese but had been "shot down", finds himself in the enviable position of being able to stake Reese's comeback in the poker game. Reese, desperate to get back in the game, agrees to let Frank come along on their next trip. However, as he and his men prepare to leave early the next day, Reese is upset that Frank catches up with them, insisting that he's a partner on their drive from Mexico and Senor Vidal's ranch. Since he'd given Frank his word (e.g. his bond!), Reese permits the greenhorn to join them, but it's obvious that he's going to make it tough going for the young man.The rest of the film deals with the complex relationships between the men and their master, Reese, as well as the evolving relationship between he and Frank, which by the end becomes one of mutual respect. Though the men work as a team by day, they are individuals who are free to get themselves into, and out of, trouble by themselves at night. At first, Frank does not understand the code, particularly when Curtis's careless act causes the wagon driver's death. But after they get to Guadalupe and Senor Vidal's ranch, where he finds that Maria has been forced into a marriage with Don Manuel Mendoza (Eugene Iglesias), Frank adopts Reese's hard attitude with a vengeance. On the drive, when Reese is injured, Frank becomes the hard nosed, seemingly unfeeling, cattle drive master. In a sense, the character of Maria is a Hitchcock-like McGuffin because the meat of the story (if you'll pardon the pun) is the cattle drive and the type of men one finds on it.

Robert D. Ruplenas I find this movie neither as wonderful as its advocates say, nor as lousy as its detractors maintain. This is a decent, well-made Western with a good story line that keeps you involved. It is rather episodic, the story line lacking a smooth continuity. And there are some weaknesses in the relationships among the characters. As one viewer said, the love relationship between Lemmon's character and the Mexican girl is not really credible. Also, the hostility between Tom and Frank is a bit too intense for us to accept their eventual bonding. And the ending seems rather contrived and abrupt. But the action propels the movie along, and the western scenery is beautifully filmed. I think Glenn Ford's presence really carries the movie. I don't think his work gets the credit it deserves; he was a truly great actor. This is no "My Darling Clementine" or "Red River" but it's entertaining enough. A footnote: the character "Frank Harris" is the name of the screenwriter, who was the author of the scandalous book "My Life and Loves." Who knew?! That book, when I was growing up, was kept hidden by my father in the house along with Lady Chatterly's Lover, Peyton Place and other raunch of the day. Evidently the Welshman actually spent some time working as a cowboy, so the movie is partly autobiographical.

chaucer-1 As westerns go, Cowboy is probably more veracious than most that have, or will, come out of Hollywood. Drama is not its strong suit, in fact the plot is pretty prosaic, but the story does convey a certain gritty reality about the life of a cow-herder in the closing years of the 19th Century - the Chicago scenes excepted. It should appeal to those who prefer a little accuracy in Hollywood offerings. As someone who has spent more than a few years in the saddle of an Australian Stock Horse, my main interest in Cowboy is with the actor Glenn Ford. I've watched most of Ford's westerns and, in these, as in Cowboy, he displays one of the most consummate examples of horsemanship that Hollywood has ever offered. I am aware of camera angles and editing magic, but in Cowboy (as in his other Westerns) his seat is superb, heels down, back straight, hands up, and a total physical connect between horse and rider - a centaur really. I wish that my own performance was as good .

secondtake Cowboy (1958)This is a strange film, and strange films are always worth a look. It's a little slow--a good half hour could have been taken out here and there--but if you forget about what a cowboy roundup Western is supposed to be and just let this unfold, you'll be at least curious, maybe even sucked in.The director, Delmar Daves, has a couple of distinctive, almost great films to his name, "Dark Passage"and "An Affair to Remember," but both of those are flawed by some awkward sense of timing, of playing out the cards quite right, and you can feel that here. But hey, Jack Lemmon as a cowboy? You bet--and it's not a comedy? Well, it is comic, for sure, a strange farce, and its exaggerations are worth the look, verging on the cusp of camp, or parody. Brian Donlevy and lead man Glenn Ford are totally serious, though, and Ford especially (as the main character) gives the film depth. There are fistfights and bucking broncos and stern men drinking stern whiskey, and through it all there remains a slightly baffled Jack Lemmon. There are strange moments, like when one cowboy is rubbing whiskey and salt into Lemmon's behind, and another scene where they throw a rattlesnake around just for fun, a man dying as a result.You'd think this slightly weird stuff would throw you out of the movie, but it has the effect of making the people more real, and the events more palpable. The second half of the movie becomes increasingly normal and serious.So what holds it back? It goes partly back to the director, I think, and his editor, making the thing just a hair awkward at times. Throw in the good but routine music and photography, as well as a story that lacks finesse, and you get this odd and not quite satisfying affair.