Customer Reviews

The Cowboys (Deluxe Edition)

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Not your typical "duster"starring "the Duke" although there's cattle, horses and cowboys. Instead more of a coming of age ,good versus evil with healing between generations and races. An interesting mix and very enjoyable.

While I liked The Cowboys every bit as well as any John Wayne movie (except perhaps The Quiet man and Red River), I was quite disappointed when I saw it the first time. I often used it when teaching high school English as an example of the differences between the movie and the book.

When I learned that The Cowboys was coming out as a movie, I read the book. Throughout the story I could imagine how The Duke would portray Wil Anderson in the movie. Heck, I'd seen most of his movies, and I thought I had him cold.

Then I saw the movie, and John Wayne screwed it up! He didn't do it like he did in the movie I saw in my head while reading the book. Very few of the scenes in his rather short appearance lived up to my expectations.

The Cowboys became my best teaching example of how the visions we see in our heads while reading are often more real and vivid than what appears on the screen.

Don't get me wrong. The Cowboys is an excellent movie, and John Wayne's portrayal of Wil Anderson was certainly masterful. It's just that it fell short of my expectations--or were my expectations too high?

Director Mark Rydell takes the acting and physical talents of veteran and rookie actors alike and melds them into a great cowboy flick. John Wayne, in one of his last films, is his usual bigger-than-life presence as rancher Wil Andersen who is faced with the need to get his cattle to market but without any help to do it. It just so happens that "gold fever" has struck his part of the West and all of the trail riders have turned into gold miners. The only trail hands left to choose from are the 11 boys who attend the local school. Andersen is faced with the challenge of herding both the cattle and the greenhorn cowboys 400 miles to market.

Andersen hires a black cook, Jebidiah Nightlinger, to feed the troupe and, after a few short days of learning the "ropes" of cattle herding, they set off on their mission. Along the way, there are some great scenes, especially the night the boys discover the sour mash that Mr. Nightlinger has hidden in his chuckwagon and the scene where the cowboys meet up with a travelling group of prostitutes. Bruce Dern as the evil rustler, Asa Watts, is outstanding as the movie's villan. Dern has that great way of contorting his face and eyes to create that genuiunely creepy style of acting that he's displayed throughout much of his career. In the scene where he captures one of the young cowboys and pumps him for information about the cattle drive, it appears that the young man really is terrified of Dern.

By now, the reader of this review probably knows that (for one of the few times in his acting career) John Wayne dies in "The Cowboys". Without going into a lot of plot-revealing details, let me suffice to say that his death does not go unpunished. The boys deliver the cattle to market and become men along the way.

As I was watching the film, it dawned on me about halfway through that "The Duke" would have made a great football coach. Many of his lines even sound like things that a Vince Lombardi or Don Shula would say. He starts out rough, gruff, and distant from the boys as they begin the journey, but eventually becomes more of a father, than an employer, to them by his exit from the film. His pride in their accomplishments along the trail is evident in his last scene.

While not a classic Western in the mold of "High Noon" or "Shane", "The Cowboys" is a great movie for young and old alike. John Wayne fans will find that it compares favorably to many of The Duke's movies from the '60s and '70s, such as "Chisum", "El Dorado", and "Rio Bravo".

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

John Wayne is amazing in this unique western drama that has him forced to use boys rather than men, to take his 1500 head of cattle to market, because of the gold rush.

When I say excellent movie - it doesn't get better than having the toughest cowboy that ever lived having to work together with kids ranging in age from approx.7yrs old up to about 15 yrs old - kids who look up to & want to emulate him, yet are also angered by his ultra tough no nonsense approach to everything.

When the evil Bruce Dern shows up - first as a lying ex. con whom Wayne rejects (because his boys are good enough and he can't abide a liar)and then later as a sadistic tormentor of children the movie takes a scary turn.

The "little things" that ruined it for me and cause me to refrain from showing it to kids(who would love it) or promoting it to friends are things like far too much bad language (a little goes a long way)& a scene in which the boys come across a brothel on wheels and the madame is none other than Marilla from Anne of Green Gables and lastly the graphic violence that seems endless at some points. Again, a little goes a long way and a movie that promotes great values on the one hand but allows this other garbage as well, lowers itself in my eyes. Great acting by John Wayne (shows a tender side) and all of the young boys with special mention to the youngest member of the cowboys Clay O'brien (great little horseman too)

I purchased the set already having all films but wanted Fort Apache in colour. Very disapointed that it was in black and whiite. Although great in b and w , I really wanted to see those landscapes in colour. I found the promotion misleading. If I had known I would not have purchased this set.

Great Movie! If you love or even like John Wayne this is a must have.

what is the name of the book that this movie waas based upon?

The Cowboys is a good but not great Duke western that benefits from good performances by the cast. Because all the men in town are off in search of gold, rancher Wil Andersen is forced to hire 11 schoolboys to help him drive a herd of cattle to Montana. Obvious problems arise on the trail as Andersen and his cook, Jebediah Nightlinger, try to help the boys learn how to be cowboys. Andersen, Nightlinger, and the 11 cowboys also must deal with a band of rustlers threatening to steal their cattle herd. The plot for this movie is nothing special, but it is still a very enjoyable movie. John Wayne and Roscoe Lee Browne are very good as are the kids. For a Duke western, the ending is a little shocking, but the revenge motive works here as the "cowboys" go after the rustlers. The Cowboys is a beautifully shot movie in the barren desert and the green mountains that deserves a watch to see the Duke in one of his last movies.

As usual, John Wayne is excellent as rancher Wil Andersen, who must watch out for the eleven schoolboys turned cowboys. He takes on a father role to them which is very believable by the end of the movie. Roscoe Lee Browne is also very good as Andersen's cook, Jebediah Nightlinger, who must deal with more than a little racism on the trail. Bruce Dern with his rattlesnake theme is incredibly creepy as rustler, Long Hair, although sometimes his character has been called Asa Watts. The 11 cowboys are all pretty good in their roles including Robert Carradine, A. Martinez, and Alfred Barker Jr. The DVD offers widescreen presentation, production notes, a featurette on the making of, and trailers from 13 different John Wayne movies. The Cowboys is not an action packed western, but it is still entertaining with good performances from the Duke, Roscoe Lee Browne, and Bruce Dern. For an enjoyable western with a bit of a twist, check out The Cowboys!

If you stop and think about it John Wayne actually made several westerns that took surprising twists. In "The Searchers," Wayne played Ethan Edwards, who spends the entire film tracking the neice who had been taken by Scar's band of raiders so that he can put a bullet in her brain, only to end up taking her home. But for his legion of fans, "The Cowboys" had to be the biggest surprise of all.

As rancher Wil Andersen, Wayne finds that his hands have left him to join a gold rush and he has no one to help him get his herd of cattle to market before winter. His only option are a group of young school boys, a hot headed young gun man named Cimarron (A Martinez), and an old cook named Jedediah Nightlinger (Roscoe Lee Browne). With hardly any training, Anderson and his "cowboys" hit the trail. But not only do they have to do deal with hundreds of heads of cattle, rattlesnakes, and the elements, there are also a gang of man led by Asa Watts (Bruce Dern) following them as well.

I think that Bruce Dern had a pretty good career after this 1972 film, which was in doubt at that time because his character shoots down John Wayne in cold blood, which was definitely not considered a smart career move at the time. Wayne warned Dern he would be hated and the young actor actually received death threats. A movie in which John Wayne actually dies is always something of a shock for movie goers (e.g., "Sands of Iwo Jima"), but usually that tragic fate is saved for the very end of the film and in "The Cowboys" there is still the entire final act of the story left to be told. The one thing you have to admit is that no other actor being killed off in the middle of a western could shock you more than the Duke.

Of the young cast of the film, Robert Carradine is the one name that sticks out the most as having made a career of acting. A few of the boys were cast in the short lived television series based on the movie but just as many did this one film and never acted again. However, the choice performances in "The Cowboys" come from the older cast members, with Brown's eloquent Mr. Nightlinger having a choice encounter with Colleen Dewhurst, who plays a madam escorting her stable of pretty young women to their next town of business. Of course, the young girls are interested in the young boys, but as she wisely declares, "The first time should be in the back of a buggy with a girl that they think they're in love with." Then there is his charming refusal, "I have the inclination, the maturity, and the where-with-all; but unfortunately, I don't have the time."

Of course Wayne's character slowly comes around to the idea that these young cowboys can actually get the job done, but the film requires them to complete their final rite of passage without him. This 1972 western provides Wayne with the final great fist fight of his career that say him make 174 films from 1926 when he was an uncredited Yale football player in "Brown of Harvard" to 1976 when he starred in his eloquent final film "The Shootist." When Andersen begins his final fight his tells his opponent: "I've broke my back once, and my hip twice. And on my worst day I could still beat the hell out of you." Yes, Bruce Dern must be a pretty good actor to survive shooting John Wayne in the back.

John Wayne is in his last years with this movie about an old 19th century rancher who finds out that the lure of the gold rush has taken away his farm hands.
After turning down an offer by ex-convicts led by a sinister Bruce Dern, to move his heard to market, he is left with no choice but to hire young boys as stock movers.
After training and settling in, the Duke and his mob are on the move. However the ex-convicts that the Duke turned away have more sinister plans for all of them.
In the meantime the Duke takes on a more fatherly role to his young charges and with his dependable cook (Roscoe Lee Brown)soon has them working as a cohesive unit. That is untill they encounter the covects and during an altercation the Duke goes down.
Infuriated, the young Cowboys set out on a course of revenge resulting in the rather brutal yet satisfying end to the convict gang and retaking of the cattle herd which reaches the markets on time much to the amuzment of the Stock agents.
Because this is an old movie, the info section of the DVD contains little but has a small documentry of the training of the actors that took part. Still good value for under $10 and you get to see an ageing Duke showing a more softer side of his personality.