Wow, this is a REALLY bad movie!

Why so much hype?

Really Surprised!

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

BIG JAKE is another solid western for the dependable John Wayne, here playing up his age as an old-time gunslinger drawn back into action once more when his own son is kidnapped. The film charts the progression of the Old West with the advent of new technology; I never thought I'd be watching motorbike stunts in a John Wayne movie! I loved Wayne's character in this one, as his one-liners are tougher than ever and he has lots of little neat touches, like needing his glasses to read anything and sticking to short-range weapons due to his failing sight. The rest of the story is familiar but the cast is well populated by familiar faces and the action hits home.

To get this out of the way up front: I love John Wayne. Seeing him in a film as bad as this isn't just disappointing, it feels wrong.Jacob McCandles (Wayne) is a famous gunslinger whose estranged wife Martha calls upon him to return to his old ranch after desperadoes kidnap the grandson Jake didn't know he had. To get the boy back, Martha is told she must have a million dollars brought to the kidnappers in Mexico. Jake takes on the task of the boy's recovery.The film opens with carnage at the McCandles ranch, not at all realistic but certainly meant that way. There are a lot of blood splotches and random killing, of women and children as well as men. The bad guys in this movie may be likened to the James Gang, but they operate more like the Manson Family. No doubt this was an effort to reach numb and jaded audiences circa 1971.This proves a serious miscalculation as the film goes on and tries to develop a lighter, comic touch around the Big Jake character. He's established as an ornery cuss who punches out one of his own sons for calling him "Daddy," then punches him out again for cracking wise about his leaving Martha. (How these McCandleses eat solid food is a mystery.)Every once in a while, Jake's dander is riled when someone tells him: "I thought you were dead.""Next man says that to me I'm gonna shoot, so help me," Jake fumes.The tone issues are the worst of it for me, clumsily handled by credited director George Sherman with an uncredited assist from Wayne. But nearly as bad is the dodgy plot. Simply put, there is no way Big Jake could expect his plans for recovering the boy to work in a world anywhere other than Hollywood. He relies on two bad eyes, an Apache also with bad eyes, a dog, and two unproven boys to take on a gang of criminals who just wasted a bunch of ranchhands and three carloads of Arizona Rangers.Oddities abound. Bruce Cabot plays Jake's Apache friend with a lot of Man Tan on his face and an attempt at Tonto-speak he discards within a few minutes. Bobby Vinton plays one of Jake's sons with an anachronistic perm and gold necklace whose sole purpose is getting shot. Other sons are played by Patrick Wayne, Wayne's real-life son and a terrible actor, and Christopher Mitchum, even worse here with his shimmering blond Beatles haircut and his left-field Evel Knievel motorcycle stunts.The motorcycle is probably anachronistic, too, although the point is made right away that we are in 1909, where lawmen ride cars, not horses, and pistols can be fed ammunition automatically. Of course, the real time change behind "Big Jake" is the 1970s, and Wayne adjusting to a new decade and a different culture. In other 1970s films, Wayne's characters handle this with grace and self-aware humor. Here Big Jake grumbles a lot and punches people.There's a confrontation scene in a Mexican town between Big Jake's group and a secondary bandit gang that, while illogical and overly convenient in its execution, is almost exciting. The final battle is a mess, though. I won't get into spoilers, but when five men with pistols and rifles surround an injured old man and a boy behind a hayrick, you need more than a lot of cutaways and back-and-forth dialogue to explain how the latter can possibly survive, let alone prevail.Watching a great actor play down to his stereotype persona is frustrating. When he's as inanimate as Wayne so often is here, it's worse. "Big Jake" seems to operate under the notion that if it features Wayne, and serves up as many reminders as it does of better Wayne movies, it will be enough. It's not, and when combined with its ugly, disjointed tone and general strangeness, "Big Jake" makes for a singularly deflating experience.

When the grandson of beautiful Maureen O'Hara and her estranged husband John Wayne is kidnapped, Wayne re-appears after being believed by many people other than his wife to be dead. He joins his sons (Bobby Vinton, Patrick Wayne, Christopher Mitchum) to find the nasty gang (lead by Richard Boone) who are holding him hostage out of vengeance. Wayne and sons fight the villains tooth and nail, and Wayne gets to show a sentimental side for both the wife he still loves and the grandson he never knew.The focus may be on the family, but the style is violence. Boone and his men are evil renegades, and Wayne and sons represent old-fashioned goodness. The conflict is there, the heroes all rugged and handsome, and the wasted O'Hara undeniably one of the most beautiful veteran actresses still working in the 1970's. You can't take your eyes off her for her fleeting time on screen, and wish she was there more. The final battle between the two groups goes on far too long, and the situation with Wayne and O'Hara is never resolved, leading the viewer to make their own conclusions. In spite of that, it is hard not to like the film, even if this is one of Wayne's bloodier westerns.

Big Jake is directed by George Sherman and written by Harry and Rita Fink. It stars John Wayne, Richard Boone, Patrick Wayne, Christopher Mitchum and Maureen O'Hara. Elmer Berstein scores the music and William H. Clothier is the cinematographer. It's shot in Panavision and Technicolor with the principal location for the shoot being Durango in Mexico. Plot finds Duke Wayne as tough old rancher/gunfighter Jake McCandles, who is estranged from his family and spends his days roaming the west with his trusty dog. However, when the McCandles family ranch is raided by a gang of outlaws led by John Fain (Boone), and Jake's grandson Little Jake is kidnapped for ransom, Big Jake gets the call from his separated wife Martha (O'Hara) to go find the boy. Which he sets off to do, with two of his sons in tow.There were many critics who felt John Wayne should have stopped making movies before the 1970's arrived. Which is a bit ignorant considering he would bow out with the heartfelt and poignant The Shootist in 1976. It's undeniable that of the ten 1970's film's he made before his death, half of them are disposable at best, Big Jake isn't one of them. Yes, the formula is hardly new, only here the blood quota is considerably higher than previous Duke Wayne outings, and yes, tonally the film is a bit too up and down for its own good. But it's a film that finds old hands Wayne and Boone turning in good shows and the action and thematic camaraderie on show more than compensates for the looming cloud of same old same old.Of worth, too, is the time setting of the story, coming as it does towards the back end of the Old West, we get to see many examples of the Wild West being tamed. Be it the railroad, or motor driven vehicle's, our protagonist and antagonist are old school characters framed by a changing West. This is where it pays to have Wayne and Boone in the main roles, turning it in in an old school, knowing, style. The names Clothier and Bernstein are synonymous with the Western genre, and they don't disappoint here, both the photography and score treat the eyes and the ears. And although not in it for very long, O'Hara adds a touch of class in what was the last of the five times she appeared on film with her friend Duke Wayne. In amongst the violence there's also plenty of fun, some intended courtesy of banter between Duke and his estranged sons, some not intended; such as watching the dog out act the siblings of Duke and Robert Mitchum! But all told, if you don't expect The Searchers or Hondo et all, then this holds up as a good way to spend an afternoon. 7/10Footnote: I wonder if John Carpenter watched and enjoyed this film so much he cribbed a reoccurring joke from it for Escape from New York? Big Jake keeps coming up against people who say that they thought he was dead, same thing happens to Snake Plissken in Carpenter's picture. A homage I'm sure.