Pacionsbo
Absolutely Fantastic
Micah Lloyd
Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.
Neive Bellamy
Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.
Leofwine_draca
THE COWBOYS offers something a little different for fans of the Duke. Here he's playing an old-timer, passing on the good-spirited mantle to a bunch of rowdy kids who he takes under his wing and trains to be cowboys in the best old-fashioned sense. Wayne looks old here and plays up his frailty, but he still has his usual toughness and mannerisms and that twinkle in his eye that makes him an irresistible character.The only real problem I have with this is the cheapness of the filming style. The interior scenes look like they were shot on video and of a TV episode quality. The young stars of the show get little chance to shine but the film does benefit from an exceptionally slimy turn from Bruce Dern as the villain of the piece. The great Roscoe Lee Browne also has a fine supporting role and makes the most of his screen time. Some parts of the film are familiar to the point of being clichéd, but THE COWBOYS builds as it goes on and finishes with a hard-hitting climax that pays off.
ma-cortes
Wayne stars an upright cattle rancher , Wil Andersen ; when his cattle drivers abandon him for the gold fields , he is forced to hire 11 school boys (Sean Kelly , Clay O'Brien , A. Martínez , Robert Carradine film debut , among others) whose ages ranging from 9 to 17 to help him drive his cattle 400 miles to market . As the pre-teenaged boys in New Mexico Territory fight off grownup cattle rustlers under the tutelage of rancher Wil (John Wayne who strides the flick like a dinosaur) and his helper Jebediah Nightlinger (Roscoe Lee Browne) . As they are recruited to work for the cattle rancher , all they wanted was their chance to be men and he gave it to them . But they are pursued and finally attacked by a group of rustlers led by Long Hair (Bruce Dern). With Wil Andersen and ranch-hand Mr. Nightlinger as father figures , as they wet-nursing an entire crew of sub-teenagers on a cattle drive , as the boys learn to become men through hard work , discipline and the usual Western battles with robbers .Nice and agreeable western with a great cast and a sensational John Wayne against his nemesis magnificently played by Bruce Dern in one of his meatiest roles as the villain . Top-notch Western packs clever plot , thrills , family feeling , slightly stylized action , shoot'em up , and turns out to be pretty entertaining ; in spite of the over-sentimentality inherent in this project produced/directed by Mark Rydell . Besides , it contains good feeling as friendship , faithfulness , companionship , and enjoyable father-adopted sons relationship . And the results make extremely amusing and thundering entertainment . Furthermore , an anti-racism subtext on Roscoe Lee Browne role was written into the script in response to ongoing criticism of John Wayne , it makes this one of Wayne's better Westerns . Wayne's image still remained impervious during the seventies surviving through an overlong career . Wayne unmistakeably a legendary figure of the West and by that time he would go playing good Westerns , as he triumphantly survived his own era with titles as ¨True grit¨ in which he won an Academy Award ,¨Big Jake¨, ¨Train robbers¨ , ¨Rooster Cogburn¨ , his last film ¨The Shootist¨, and ,of course , this ¨The cowboys ¨ . In some ways is a companion movie to posterior ¨Cahill , United States Marshal¨ also involved John with kiddies . The screenplay is plain and simple , with a conventional plot , but ultimately gets overcome . Gorgeous outdoors with decent production design , shot on location in Castle Rock , Durango Colorado , Chama , Galisteo , New Mexico , Sonoita , Elgin , Arizona , and Empire Ranch , Arizona . Colorful and spectacular cinematography in Panavision by Robert L. Surtees . Rousing and emotive musical score by John Williams in his ordinary style . And you'll love both the lightning unexpected finale and the performance of Roscoe Lee Browne as Wayne's friend and food supplier . It inspired the TV series with similar cast as Robert Carradine , A Martínez , Sean Kelly , Clay O'Brien and Moses Gunn as Jebediah Nightlinger .This well-paced film was compellingly directed by Mark Rydell . Pic contains Rydell's usual themes as familiar feeling , a little bit of charming humor , friendship and and sense of comradeship among people . Mark does the human touch and full of insight that accompanied him during most of his films and the story develops pleasantly in large frames with an interesting plot and fully adjusted to the requirements of the action . Mark Rydell directed a lot of films as ¨Even Money , ¨Crime of the century¨ , ¨Intersection¨, ¨For the boys¨ , ¨Harry and Walter go to N.Y.¨, ¨Cinderella Liberty¨ and ¨The ¨Reivers¨, though his winning years were the 70s and 80s with successes as ¨The rose¨(79) , ¨On Golden pond¨ (81) , ¨The river¨(84) and this ¨The cowboys¨ .
npdeo18
It was a great pleasure to see Duke enacting such a role than the usual roles of a cowboy. The supporting cast by Roscoe Lee Browne as a part of the crew and the schoolboys to drive the cattle drive were amazing and fun to watch. The way John Wayne guided those schoolboys were worth watching and funny as well especially the stutter scene. Meanwhile the role enacted by Bruce Dern as criminal/bandit is definitely praise worthy and it was encouraging to see him in a duel with the Duke. It would have been great to see him enacting the role of Bond Villain. At the same time of the scenes were quite emotional especially the scene before Duke's death was quite emotional and touching. Overall the film along with The Shootist is one of the best films of John Wayne in his career end. Even if a remake is made no one would be able to match up Duke in this role.
dallasryan
I guess you could say the little kids in this movie made good on their promise. But for the most part, everything about this movie is absurd and nothing is fun about it either. If you're going to have absurd at least have some fun stuff going on. The only real good laughs were where the little kids made a plan with Good Ole Roscoe Boy in about 5 minutes time to over throw say about 15 grown men lol. The viewer will get a pretty good laugh at how they catch these 15 men. A couple of the kids will be hiding in the bushes throwing ropes around a few of the men, and then other kids will jump from the trees as if they were Ewoks hitting the men to the ground. Oh and then the kids will kill all of these men. Yeah I'm sure these little kids won't be traumatized from all the killing they did or seeing John Wayne get blasted up as if he were Peter Weller in Robocop! I wasn't sure if I was watching a Cowboy movie, or if I was watching Death Wish or Hook or Peter Pan or The Sandlot, what the heck was I suppose to be watching here lol? Seriously, the only fun parts are how the kids catch the bad guys or seeing Lewis Skolnick(Robert Carradine) kill some bad guys or him riding a horse. I kept wanting him to say 'You know Gilbert...' or 'You know Booger...'. I would have loved for him to do his famous Lewis Skolnick laugh in front of the Duke and see the Duke's reaction to it. It also might have been cool if Ogre came out and yelled 'Nerds!!'. But I digress, the premise of this movie is ridiculous from the get go. John Wayne has no one to go on a cattle drive with, so he hires young kids to tame the cattle on this ride. For one thing, I get that the kids will make money and it will help their families, but some of the families of the kids would have said 'no, you'll get killed, you're not going.' Or some families of the kids would have said 'The money is good, but we need you to help around the house this summer.' Or some of the kids would have chickened out or some would have said screw this hard labor. That would have left Wayne with about 2 or 3 kids in the end. But somehow, every kid comes along on this ridiculous journey and all of their parents are cool with it and the writer even tries to justify it when the kids are leaving saying bye to their parents, as if every parent is okay with it in their own way that their kid is leaving for the summer to go on a death wish journey. Then on the trip, a couple of the kids encounter some very pretty prostitutes, so this movie should let the kids have fun with the prostitutes(can't show it of course, but why not, the movie needs to have some fun and some laughs), but no, good Ole Roscoe comes in and gives one of his usual monologue/sermons to the Madame about not to corrupt the kids please. Basically Roscoe is the BuzzKill of the movie. Everyone is always having a good time and then the minute Buzz Killington Roscoe comes onto the scene or says anything, everything stinks once again(like this movie). And does John Wayne really have to get shot and die the way he does? I mean, this film is just a complete buzzkill. John Wayne barely beats up the bad guy, then he walks away and the bad guy shoots him in the back, well not yet, first he shoots him in the arm, then in the leg, then in the other arm, then finally through the back through the chest, all in front of the kids by the way, hence the reason for the Little Rascals' Murderous killing spree, all for the revenge of The Duke(Something about Little kids killing for revenge and then laughing about it all, like little kids do, at the end of the film, just doesn't sit right in the stomach). But come on, did John Wayne really have to die like that. Couldn't the filmmaker just have him get shot in the back. Was it really necessary to make John Wayne suffer? Was really any of it necessary, any of this movie? It would have been better if John Wayne just stayed on the ranch with his woman, waiting until next year to take the herd of cattle out, and that would have been a more interesting film then what I saw. But what I saw was a ridiculous movie from beginning to end.
