Wayne was 65 in this film, dying 4 years later of lung cancer. He wears a bad toupee, and his gut is thick and square. He's tough and stiffened, the big man's atypical graceful feet a memory.The plot is a unrealistic fantasy: the ritual passage to manhood required by society is the opportunity to work a cattle drive. A gold rush lost Adamson (Wayne the cattle rancher), his crew, so he tests and hires the eager local schoolboys.
Bruce Dern, (I swear he had a nose job later on), is a sadistic rustler, rejected by Wayne for lying to him.
Wayne is shot to death by Dern in a surprising plot twist in the middle of the film. The boys finish the drive without him,and take satisfying revenge on Dern and his 10 (10 adult!) buddies.
The film was controversial at the time: it uses the N word (an elegantly spoken Roscoe Lee Brown plays his cook), a politically correct cast, tough-love discipline, including a cure for stuttering, and life lessons in the choice never to stand down stirred the pot.
In one scene, Wayne releases his string of horses from the corral to run free on the range, a beautiful and memorable image of tempered wisdom letting go when it's time.
Cinematography is by Bruce Surtees, score by John Williams, shot around iconic Santa Fe, Wayne's iron integrity, an elegiac tone veil softening the merciless western code of revenge.
It's a memorable film. Tommy Lee Jones has scheduled a re-make, though there's no current Googlenews to report about it.
I'm still OK with the way it was.
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