Simply Perfect

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

"I made a film where nobody got shot and nobody went to see it." - Sam Peckinpah Steve McQueen plays Junior "JR" Bonner, a rodeo circuit cowboy who has returned to his home-town of Prescott Arizona for its Fourth of July Frontier Day celebrations. Junior, traumatically mauled by a bull months earlier, plans on riding and taming "Sunshine", the meanest bull in town. It's an act of affirmation, Junior hoping to hang onto a Western ethos which he knows to be on its way out. Meanwhile, Junior's younger brother Curly bulldozes houses and tends to his growing mobile home enterprise. Always the opportunist, Curly hopes to commoditize Junior's authenticity. "You're as genuine as a sunrise," he says, hoping to turn his brother into a walking mascot. Anything to deliver the "Western" experience to paying customers.And so as the film progresses, director Sam Peckinpah captures the twilight of the West. Tractors replace guns, trucks replace horses, rootless mobile homes consume fixed houses, the Western experience is turned into plastic, and expansive scrub-lands shrink into strip malls and housing estates. Desperate for wilderness, Junior's father thus jumps ship and heads off to the badlands of Australia. He hears there's gold there.Thematically the film covers nothing especially new (see "Sitting Bull's History Lesson" and "Lonely Are The Brave" instead), but it captures the timbre of both the rodeo circuit and of lonely men well past their prime. Peckinpah utilises his trademark slow-motion shots and non-linear editing to poor effect.Incidentally, McQueen loved to play roles which portrayed him as a "real man" and "rugged outdoors type". Ironically, most of his iconic, famously dangerous scenes ("Bonner", "The Great Escape" etc) make heavy use of stunt doubles.7.5/10 – Worth one viewing.

Woe! This is a Steve McQueen film made by Sam Peckinpah. The latter always thrived on violence to get his points across in motion pictures. For Peckinpah, this film makes "Mary Poppins" extremely exciting.No wonder Robert Preston and Ida Lupino, the parents of McQueen in the film, are separated. Both are terribly miscast in their respective roles. By 1972, Lupino, with her red hair, had terrible bags under her eyes. Her time as the great actress she was had long come and gone.Where is the real story development in this yarn? The potential is there as brother Joe Don Baker wishes to sell off the land to developers in order to make trailers. Sounds great for modern day real estate. This issue is never fully realized. Preston has the foolish notion of going to Australia to do some mining there. The fact that his son Junior buys him a plane ticket there has meaning, but really no value.The rodeo riding scenes were authentic, but the film lacks punch-even with the bar room brawl. Was Peckinpah trying to say farewell to western films by doing this film? Had they become passé?

A modern-day Western, Junior Bonner is a director Sam Peckinpah's lovely effort, feeling look at the world of the rodeo. Steve McQueen, engagingly easygoing but obstinate , is the title character, a rodeo rider out to win a big bull-riding competition in his hometown called Prescott. The rodeo champion works rodeo circuit contest , as the has-been rodeo star trying to make it big again. McQueen is a drifter who returns his small town and he strives to preserve his values in an often harsh modern world. McQueen decides to raise money for his father's journey towards Australia by challenging a formidable bull whose owner is Ben Johnson.Peckinpah's slow-motion camera , his usual trademark,is put to particularly nice utilization shooting the balletic movement of the rodeo, at once more splendidly and awe-inspiring than any gun battle. An enjoyable country-western , Junior Bonner is lovely directed by Sam Peckinpah as an elegiac perspective at the world of the rodeo . Steve McQueen turns in an excellent acting as a drifting rodeo star who is searching in a changing world for values that have long time disappeared. He also must deal with his feuding parents, and selfish brother wonderfully performed by Robert Preston, Ida Lupino and Joe Don Baker. Robert Preston is particularly fine as the old veteran, he and Ida Lupino strike real sparks. Furthermore, it contains an emotive score by Jerry Fielding , Peckinpah's usual, and colorful cinematography by Lucien Ballard. An agreeable country-western with marvelous interpretations and exciting rodeo footage including slow-moving images and a much quieter movie than habitual from ¨Cross of Iron¨,¨The getaway¨, ¨Wild bunch¨ , ¨Major Dundee¨ director Sam Peckinpah.

Different types of cowboys and their women descend upon Prescott, Arizona for the Frontier Days parade and rodeo festivities; it's also the hometown of aged rodeo rider Steve McQueen, who uses the opportunity to drop in on his rowdy, estranged father, his mother (divorced from his dad and operating an antiques store), his condescending brother and disapproving sister-in-law. Screenwriter Jeb Rosebrook has penned an interesting--if not especially fresh or original--character study, an offbeat project for its high-powered male lead, directed by Sam Peckinpah in jauntily low-keyed spirits. Robert Preston gives the movie a little extra bounce and theatricality as the wayward father, though McQueen's star charisma is muted to the point of his evaporating into the milieu (something both he and Peckinpah possibly strove for, though I can't imagine why). Cinematographer Lucien Ballard uses slow-motion and freeze-frame effects to help create a mood, and the editing is flashy without much purpose behind the technique. Awfully similar in thematic content to Cliff Robertson's "J.W. Coop" from 1971. Curiously, McQueen, Peckinpah, and Ballard filmed this back-to-back with "The Getaway", a different type of picture if there ever was one. ** from ****