When it comes to villains in Wayne films there are few to equal Richard Boone’s John Fain. Wayne and Boone only have two scenes together but both actors make the most of them. While they are hard, violent men, Fain strives to present a more educated and congenial front. This allows Boone to charm the viewer, yet we can never forget that he would kill the boy without a second thought.
By comparison Wayne is a straight shooter (both figuratively and literally) and he never leaves you in any doubt of his intentions. Estranged from his wife (O’Hara) for reasons we are never fully privy to, he’s an old man whose world is changing with the onset of “civilisation” and such modern contraptions as the automobile. This “man out of time” theme is something else it shares with The Wild Bunch but it never fully explores.
The film references some of Wayne’s past glories as well. Ethan Edwards' catchphrase from The Searchers (“That’ll be the day”) is used at one point and the ranch used as the McCandles home is the same one featured in Chisum, but it’s the cast that bring the most memories of earlier films – there’s O'Hara, of course, but also Bruce Cabot, John Agar, and Harry Carey Jr. (playing a villain for a change). Then there’s the dog which brings back memories of Sam in Hondo, with both coming from the same breeder/trainer; this time though it doesn’t even have a name, just “Dog.”
The script by Harry Julian and Rita M. Fink (who wrote Dirty Harry) is above average. Wayne gets some great dialogue, including a Harryesque “do you feel lucky” kind of speech at the end.
The credited director on the film is George Sherman, a man Wayne first worked with in his pre-Stagecoach days. But Sherman was not a well man during the making of the film (although he outlived Wayne by twelve years) and Duke directed much of the film himself but refused to take a screen credit (he’d done the same thing on The Comancheros in 1961).
It’s a far better film than either of the two he was credited for (The Alamo and The Green Berets), making the most of the impressive locations and with a brilliantly executed climactic shootout. It’s a well-made and, in the case of Wayne and Boone at least, well-acted film that falls short of being a classic but it’s still worth seeing for fans of Wayne or the western genre in general.
Article comments
1 - Robert Ham
Great column. Duke's performance in The Cowboys is extraordinary. Thank you, Ian.