The Cowboys

Directed by Mark Rydell, The Cowboys follows John Wayne’s Wil Andersen as he reluctantly hires a group of inexperienced boys as cowhands after his regular employees quit to search for gold – with the narrative detailing Wil and company’s efforts at transporting a large herd to a destination more than 400 miles away. Filmmaker Rydell, working from Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr.’s screenplay, delivers an erratic, episodic western that benefits heavily from its compelling performances and smattering of enthralling sequences, with, in terms of the latter, the picture consistently elevated by interludes of an often irresistibly engrossing and crowd-pleasing variety. (There is, for example, a riveting confrontation between Wayne’s hero and Bruce Dern’s mustache-twirling villain that ultimately stands as the movie’s high-water-mark in terms of entertainment value.) It’s equally apparent, though, that The Cowboys is generally unable to justify its absurdly overlong running time of 131 minutes, and there’s little doubt, as a result, that the film contains a handful of palpable lulls that cumulatively diminish its overall power and impact. By the time the surprising and exciting stretch that closes the proceedings rolls around, however, The Cowboys has cemented its place as a better-than-average Wayne vehicle that does, in addition to everything else, boast one of the actor’s most engaging and heartfelt performances.

*** out of ****