Cowboy

Based on a book, Cowboy follows Jack Lemmon’s Frank Harris as he joins the crew of a legendary cowboy named Tom Reece (Glenn Ford) and subsequently embarks on a cattle drive to Mexico – with the movie detailing Frank’s ongoing attempts at adapting to the rough-and-tumble lifestyle of his compatriots. It’s a fine premise that is, for the most part, employed to woefully uninvolving effect by Delmer Daves, as the director, working from Edmund H. North’s screenplay, delivers an exceedingly (and excessively) lackadaisical narrative that is, for much of the film’s first half, far too uneventful to make a positive impact (ie the movie initially feels as though it’s stretching out five minutes of material to feature length). It’s clear, then, that Cowboy‘s relatively tolerable atmosphere is due almost entirely to the efforts of stars Ford and Lemmon, with, in particular, the latter turning in as engaging and charismatic a performance one might’ve anticipated (and it’s clear, too, that the actor effortlessly sells his character’s shift from 98-pound-weakling to confident, tough cowboy). And although the picture does improve slightly in its second half, especially as Frank becomes more and more invested in the cattle drive, Cowboy has long-since cemented its place as an ineffectual Western that contains too few memorable elements to even warrant a mild recommendation (and it doesn’t help, certainly, that the film’s been littered with off-putting instances of animal cruelty).

** out of ****