Award-winning actor Robert Duvall has left his footprints all over the Wild West. Watch Lonesome Dove and you'll see an actor radiating dependability and timeworn wisdom! But the actor's early Western career narrates a different history... one of lawlessness, corruption, and murder! Say what you want about Duvall's Western career, but he can hardly be accused of playing the same character over and over again. Just take a look at this rap sheet...

Broken Trail (2006)
In this critically-beloved miniseries that comes courtesy of AMC (ahem), Duvall shrugs off the delinquency of his past to follow the cowboy code, and passes with flying colors. While he's ferrying a shipment of horses across the frontier, Duvall rescues five Chinese women being used as sex slaves. It seems like that the women don't take kindly to being referred to by numbers, but it's clear that Bobby's heart is in the right place.

Open Range (2003)
Duvall here plays "Boss" Spearman opposite Kevin Costner. He's a crusty old coot -- a type Duvall perfected in his late career -- who wants to preserve the frontier's open range. In a way, Duvall's old-timer reminds us of another late period performance: John Wayne's portrayal of Rooster Cogburn, Duvall's nemesis in True Grit. The similarities even extend to injuries. Duvall fractured his ribs during the filming, a feat that the Duke matched in a mishap during lensing of The Undefeated.

Continue reading "Beyond Broken Trail and Lonesome Dove - The Cowboy Career of Robert Duvall" »

Legendary director Sam Peckinpah blew apart the Western with movies packed with explosive violence and fatalistic antiheroes. Between battling the studios -- not to mention the bottle -- the iconoclastic director created a ragged Wild West that was brutal in its beauty. There's gold to be found in even the craggiest of his creations, but the following round-up represents the pick of the litter.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)
This is one of Peckinpah's most personal movies, as the sunglasses-wearing, mustachioed Warren Oates channels the director in a gruesome fable about the burdens of a decapitated head rotting in a sack. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia was reviled upon release, but re-appraisal has largely turned the tide. A Western in feel more than appearance, its influence is all over movies like The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and No Country for Old Men.

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973)
This flick is another of Peckinpah's problematic productions (more on that later!), and one of his most ambitious. Sliced and diced by the studios, it's still one of Peckinpah's finest efforts. It features fine performances from Kris Kristofferson and James Coburn as opposing souls, and Bob Dylan's wistful, off-the-cuff soundtrack is a delight.

Continue reading "The Best Sam Peckinpah Westerns Are a Wild Bunch Indeed" »

Wyatt Earp was a jack of all trades: gambler, buffalo hunter, con man, prospector, and Hollywood film consultant. But it's as the fearless lawman who brought justice to Dodge City and made a last stand at Tombstone's O.K. Corral that he's best known. The historical facts might not stack up with the legend, but what's certain is that the man contained multitudes. So how can only one actor do him justice? Lucky for us, there are plenty to choose from! Let's move back in time from most recent backwards and see the manifold ways he was portrayed.

1. Kevin Costner, Wyatt Earp (1994)
While the other movies included here tend to take on pieces of Earp's life, Costner deserves credit for painting on a larger canvass. He deals with Earp's boyhood in Missouri, his gunfighting at Tombstone, and even his prospecting in Alaska. As such, Costner's Earp is a more full-figured film portrait, even if it could have done with a little more trimming and focus.

2. Kurt Russell, Tombstone (1993)
This is one of the best Western portrayals of the Earp story -- surprising, since Earp's character is largely relegated to the background. Sam Elliot, Bill Paxton, and, of course, an anemic Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday are all more fleshed out than the man at the center of things. But perhaps it's because Russell is able to be a kind of mythic silhouette that makes the film work. We know who Earp is, so why belabor the point?

Continue reading "The Ten Faces of Wyatt Earp - From Kevin Costner to Erroll Flynn" »

While it took decades for John Wayne to make elegiac movies about reaching the end of the trail, Tommy Lee Jones' cowpokes are grizzled old dogs from the start. A Texas native, Jones is often cast as the type of maverick common to the Lone Star State -- whether it's in The Fugitive or Space Cowboys. Want more credentials? He owns his own ranch! A cowboy through and through.

No Country for Old Men (2007)
Now, is this one really a Western? It certainly feels like one. Jones plays Sheriff Ed Bell, an old hat who finds himself completely out of his element when faced with a new, vicious breed of killers. Tones of The Wild Bunch abound, and as far as mythic Western landscapes go, No Country for Old Men features some of the best since The Assassination of Jesse James. Fun side note: In a show of Texas pride, Jones successfully lobbied the Coen brothers to have some of the movie's scenes filmed in West Texas rather than the less expensive environs of New Mexico.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)
Though it borrows heavily from Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, this gruesome Western is infinitely more optimistic about the human condition than that flick. Warren Oates' drunkard in the original carried around a festering severed head to collect reward money; Jones' motivation for carrying a decomposing body to Mexico is more enlightened: To give a proper burial to a friend, and punish his killer. It's a surprisingly potent ride.

Continue reading "Natural Born Gunslinger - Tommy Lee Jones' Trips to the Wild West" »

There are John Ford people, and there are Howard Hawks people. Me, I'm more of a Howard Hawks guy. A workmanlike director who came from a screenwriting background, Hawks made stories that were less interested in myth-making than in the quirks of human interaction. From the gangster drama Scarface to the classic screwball comedy of His Girl Friday, Hawks made a bewilderingly wide range of movies that feature some of the most memorable characters in cinema. And of course they include a few excursions into the Wild West...

Rio Lobo (1970)
This was Hawks' last movie and well into the third act of John Wayne's career. So it's no surprise that both seem to be resting on their laurels in this movie that mashes together elements of both Rio Bravo and El Dorado. The Duke plays a determined Union colonel, vowing revenge on the Confederates who hijack the train was guarding... How it all plays it may not exactly surprise you, but even when the Duke and Hawks are in second gear, they're still easy to enjoy.

Continue reading "Six for the Road - Howard Hawks' All Too Rare Trips Out West" »

Make no mistake, the Wild West was baptized in blood. (Yes, even given the oft-lampooned image of a stricken cowboy clutching a bloodless wound, muttering his dying words to a passerby, before collapsing in the dust.) But with the '60s, and the nightly carnage of the Vietnam War, the Western reddened like you wouldn't believe. Here's a walk through some of the most gore-laden Westerns to date.

10. The Man from Laramie (1955)
If violence makes you squeamish, it's even harder to see it happen to a good ol' guy like Jimmy Stewart. The Man From Laramie contains one of the most gut-wrenching scenes in Western history, as it shows Stewart's cowboy (a stranger in town) getting his hand shot through for supposedly trespassing on a rancher's property. Far from home and outnumbered, not even Stewart's good manners can prevent the outcome, which squeaks this one onto the list at number ten.

9. Warlock (1959)
Hand mutilation, take two! This time it's Richard Widmark getting his hand pinned to a table with a steak knife. The camera lingers off-screen but the tortured look on Widmark's face as his attacker twists the knife is infinitely more painful than showing the wound could ever be. That said, the humiliation does make his eventual revenge that much sweeter. Of course that's nothing compared to...

Continue reading "Into the Blood-Red Sunset - The Top Ten Most Violent Westerns" »

While a bottle of rye whiskey is the ubiquitous tonic in the Wild West, some cowpokes need their pick-me-ups a bit stronger. Traces of hard drug use were pretty scarce in Westerns before the late '60s, when filmmakers were still under the censorship controls of the Hayes Code. Of course, that's not to say that offenders don't pop up in Westerns from time to time, as they do in...

Don't Come Knocking (2005)
Playwright Sam Shepard wrote this neo-Western, and stars in it as a has-been Western actor with a collection of addictions and regrets. After fleeing a shoot in Monument Valley, he does what any on-the-outs cowpoke might do: Heads to the local saloon (casino) and hits the hard stuff (cocaine). Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "Line 'em up, barkeep" -- now doesn't it?

Continue reading "Smoke 'em Up, Cowboy! A User's Guide to Drugs in the Wild, Wild West" »

From his apprenticeship in B-movies to his transformation into an American icon, John Wayne's success at the movies seems pinned to the genre he helped create -- the Western. And while it's easy to think of Wayne as playing the same sauntering cowboy in every movie, there's actually an enormous amount of diversity in his work. "I don't act, I react," was a standard Duke quip. But there's more there than meets the eye. Look close at Wayne's best movies and you'll see layers as deep as the canyons of Monument Valley. 

10. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)
Ten minutes in, there's all the familiar signposts of a John Ford flick: A romantic subplot, a foreshadowed battle, and some ethnic comic relief. (For an Irish-American, he sure made them the butt of a lot of jokes!) But what makes this movie truly special is John Wayne's elegiac performance as a retiring Calvary officer, closing the book on his days on the lonesome frontier. Striking a bittersweet note, Wayne comes off more authentic than the self-assured cowpokes he usually plays.

9. True Grit (1969)
The Duke's in an eye patch calling everyone "Pilgrim." For this, True Grit is much beloved among Wayne fans. And there's a lot to like in the actor's broad, Oscar-snatching performance as Rooster Cogburn, an archetype of irascibility -- a very good thing, since Kim Darby's nails-on-chalkboards performance as the young, precocious Mattie Ross is less appealing. Here's hoping Mattie's done more justice in the Coen brothers' upcoming adaptation (that's right!).

Continue reading "Bravo Rio Bravo - Top Ten Westerns Starring the Duke" »

From Robin Williams playing a psycho in One Hour Photo to Jim Carrey playing, well... a psycho in The Cable Guy, actors have always enjoyed upending expectations with their roles. Home Alone's Macaulay Culkin? Check (The Good Son). E.T. cutie-pie Drew Barrymore? Check (Poison Ivy). But those role reversals are particularly jarring in Westerns, where the line between good and bad is so firmly etched in the sand. Which good cowboys have most memorably gone bad?

Burt Lancaster in Vera Cruz (1954)
There are no out-and-out heroes in this darkly humorous tale of greed, and Burt Lancaster's unscrupulous mercenary doesn't come close. He's a wolfish lout who's a delight to watch on screen and a far cry from his Oscar-nominated role as Sgt. Milton Warden in From Here to Eternity. Making him seem more despicable still is that he plays opposite Gary Cooper, who is clearly the lesser of two evils. Critics were stunned -- not necessarily for the better -- and chances are, you will be too.

Henry Fonda in Fort Apache (1948)
When not filming movies, Henry Fonda was often flying kites with best friend Jimmy Stewart. (Seriously.) But that doesn't mean he hasn't played the villain: While his role as the evil man in Once Upon a Time in the West is flashier, his turn here as a lieutenant who leads his men to be slaughtered on the cross of his own ego deserves accolades -- it's delicious to see Fonda playing the arrogant fop.

Continue reading "That Dastardly Henry Fonda! When Good Cowboys Go Bad" »

Leading man Gregory Peck is probably best known for his role as crusading lawyer Atticus Finch in 1962's To Kill a Mockingbird. But like many actors coming of age in the 1940s, he also had a considerable career in Westerns. Interestingly enough, his frontier characters display not only the moral fortitude of his Mockingbird character, but are frequently those the jurist would lock up: Thieves, gamblers and killers. Read on for a round-up of Peck's greatest gunslinging hits.

10. Billy Two Hats (1974)
Those who anxiously awaited the pairing of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in Heat have nothing on cinema's greatest meeting of the minds -- Gregory Peck and I Love Lucy's Desi Arnaz. In this heist Western, the two team up for a robbery that goes awry and viewers can probably guess the rest of the plot themselves. Most interesting as a curiosity, Billy Two Hats boasts another odd claim to fame: Filmed in Israel, it has the honor of being a "Matzo Western."

9. Shoot Out (1971)
If there's one sub-genre most of us would like to die a slow death, it's the "guy-saddled-with-a-precocious-kid" movie (see Cop and a Half). Here, Peck plays an aging outlaw out to settle an old score. But his quest for revenge is hobbled when he's saddled with a cute 6-year-old. For actually making this cliched trope work somewhat, this one gets a nine.

Continue reading "Western Holiday - The Top Ten Greatest Gregory Peck Westerns" »