Junior Bonner

Steve McQueen’s first collaboration with Sam Peckinpah, Junior Bonner casts the actor as the title character – an aging rodeo pro who rolls into his home town of Prescott, Arizona for its Fourth of July festivities and is subsequently confronted with a whole host of familiar faces (including his down-on-his-luck father and his black-sheep brother). Peckinpah has infused the proceedings with an exceedingly deliberate sensibility that proves an appropriate match for Jeb Rosebrook’s laid-back screenplay, and there’s little doubt that the ensuing atmosphere of authenticity plays a significant role in the film’s admittedly mild success (with the fully fleshed-out nature of even the most minor of supporting characters ultimately reflecting Rosebrook’s impressive attention to detail). And although McQueen offers up as compelling and magnetic a performance as one might’ve expected, Junior Bonner nevertheless remains curiously uninvolving for the majority of its running time – as the leisurely pace effectively prevents the viewer from wholeheartedly connecting with the material. This is despite the uniformly stellar performances and the inclusion of a few genuinely poignant sequences, with the scene in which Junior sits down for an honest chat with his pop (Robert Preston’s Ace Bonner) certainly the most apt example of the latter. The end result is an affable piece of work that never quite becomes the stirring drama that one imagines Peckinpah was shooting for, although the movie is undoubtedly a must for fans of McQueen – as the actor effortlessly steps into the shoes of a much more low-key character than he’s come to be associated with.

**1/2 out of ****