Nice effects though.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This minimally, if appropriately, titled western should not be confused with the John Wayne vehicle "The Cowboys". Both are worth a watch. The plot of both involves a 'coming of age' story involving a long trail drive. However "The Cowboys" involves a bunch of schoolboys as the sole hired cowboys, hence requiring an 's' on the word ending. The present film involves a grown man, with no ranch experience: an urbane front desk clerk at a large Chicago hotel, who has long dreamed of becoming a cowboy, but never landed an opportunity. Played by urbane Jack Lemmon, as Frank Harris, he finally gets his chance by a fluke in his unlikely relationship with trail boss Tom Reese(Glenn Ford), who is staying at that hotel after a long trail drive. Like most trail drive cowboys, Reese spends and loses his end-of-trail bonanza foolishly, providing an opening for Harris. For the remainder of the film, they function as reluctant buddies, until near the end, when they finally feel like real buddies. Should be considered a classic, in the same league as such long trail drive -themed films as "Red River" and "The Tall Men", for example. In fact, in most respects, it's even better than those films, with the romance aspect the weakest. In fact, THIS MIGHT JUST BE MY FAVORITE WESTERN! Glen Ford isn't really my favorite actor, but he's great here. He and Lemmon play off each other really well. One of the funniest scenes is the look on the face of Harris's former boss at the Chicago hotel where he used to work, when he comes strolling in with Reese as a full partner, and demands the full VIP treatment traditionally given to Reese and his cowboys. We see the two enjoying their first bath in weeks in adjoining tubs, when Harris spots a cockroach on the wall and blasts it to bits with his 6 shooter beside the tub, in mimicry of Reese when Harris was a hotel clerk. The message is that Harris has arrived as a gunslinger as well as a trail cowboy and trail boss.Anna Kashfi plays the diminished female lead role, as Maria Vidal, who is present in only a few scenes. While her wealthy Mexican family has been spending an extended stay in the hotel, she and Harris have developed a secret romantic relationship. But, her father has already decided who she will marry, which excludes Harris. Reese buys Vidal's cattle herd in Mexico, just across the Rio Grande, to be driven to Wichita, then by rail to Chicago. When Harris again meets the family in Mexico, he learns that Maria has been married. However, she secretly arranges to meet him in an isolated spot. He asks if she loves her husband. She doesn't answer , but kisses him instead, and they part forever. Actually, I fail to see the attraction in Maria. She seems sullen all the time, probably because she doesn't like her father's choice of a husband, and is unwilling to run off with recent acquaintance Harris....Anna Kashfi was Marlon Brando's first wife, and the mother of Christian, later to be much in the news about his murder of his half sister's boyfriend. She later adopted her East Indian-sounding stage name to emphasize her(disputed) claimed part Indian heritage.The outdoor filming locations, mostly in Oklahoma and New Mexico, provide some rather scenic, often rugged, country, beautifully photographed. There are various events and conflicts along the trail and in Mexico to keep us entertained or on edge at times. One involves an attempt by a small Comanche party to steal a small group of cattle that have separated from the herd, and are being rounded up by Harris. Against the judgment of his second in command, Reese orders that the main herd be stampeded in this direction to scare off the Comanches and probably save Harris's life. Harris and Reese both kill a Comanche or two, but Reese is wounded. After the Comanches leave, Harris chastises Reese for risking scattering the whole herd, claiming he could have fought off the Comanches by himself. Furthermore, he says he will function as the de facto trail boss until Reese recovers from his wound. Reese is irate at these pronouncements. We have a potential "Red River" situation developing, as Reese is beginning to fear that Harris may have gained enough confidence to try to become the dominant partner. But, eventually, Reese becomes convinced that this is not Harris's agenda, and they end the film as mutually respecting buddies, after a harrowing mutual experience inside a railcar packed with cattle.Another highlight is the Mexican slip-the-ring-over-the-bull's-horn contest. Very dangerous, featuring Maria's husband in horseback and Reese on foot...The Mexican trumpet player seen or heard in the background several times is the world famous concert soloist Rafael MendezThe screenplay is based upon a real saga, as related in Frank Harris's "My Life and Loves". Long banned in various countries for its frequent sexual explicitness, only one of many chapters is devoted to the subject at hand. Harris was once a clerk in a Chicago hotel, did develop a romantic interest in the daughter of the rich Latin Vidal family staying there, and did join a trail drive headed by one Tom Reese.

I don't know what I'll do if they ever come out with another Western that demythologizes the American myth. Hang myself in the barn, like old Doc Bender, I guess.It all seems to have begun around 1950. Gregory Peck was seen with a funky haircut in "The Gunfighter" -- and a MUSTACHE, and him the hero. And then Shane teaches little Joey about guns. "One's all you need if you know how to use it." After that they got frankly pedagogical, as when Henry Fonda teaches Tony Perkins how to draw a gun in "The Tin Star." And it wound up, at last count, with John Wayne giving a shooting lesson to Ron Howard in "The Shootist," the point being that it's not how fast you draw but how unflappable you are. Well, I suppose Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven" was touched by this didacticism too. But actually Tom Gries' "Will Penny" did a better job without being the least superior about it. Sorry. Had to get that off my chest. The urge to teach is a common human failing.In this movie, Frank Harris chips in to buy a herd of cattle in Mexico and drive them to a rail stop where the cows will be shipped to Chicago. Harris was a real figure -- a writer of outlandish tales full of outlandish lies, and his ears were, well, outlandish. He's best known for his sexually explicit "My Life and Loves." Jack Lemon gives us a Frank Harris who is sensitive and humane. He's never been on the trail before and his head is full of romantic nonsense about being a cowboy. Well, the Stud Duck, Glenn Ford, does to him what Sergeant John Wayne does to rookie Marines. Man, does Ford shape up Lemon. There is no sentimentality or solidarity in the trail riders. They mind their own business. If one of their number puts himself in a position to be killed, that's his own business. Philosophically they're libertarians in chaps, and Ford is the toughest of them all.But when Ford is disabled while saving Lemon's life, Lemon take over and by now he's learned to be as pitiless as Ford was. At the same time, Ford has learned from Lemon that no man is an island. Their roles are the reverse of what they were at the beginning. Angie Dickenson is hardly there, alas, because she looks as compelling as ever. Anna Kashfi makes a good Mexican Señora.The most exciting scene takes place in a Mexican bar. You will notice a man playing a solo riff on a trumpet. The man is Rafael Mendez who was a virtuoso and was known internationally for some astounding renderings of popular, folk, and classical trumpet music. He played in multiple genres with ease, like Wynton Marsalis. He composed too.

Cowboy (1958)This is a strange film, and strange films are always worth a look. It's a little slow--a good half hour could have been taken out here and there--but if you forget about what a cowboy roundup Western is supposed to be and just let this unfold, you'll be at least curious, maybe even sucked in.The director, Delmar Daves, has a couple of distinctive, almost great films to his name, "Dark Passage"and "An Affair to Remember," but both of those are flawed by some awkward sense of timing, of playing out the cards quite right, and you can feel that here. But hey, Jack Lemmon as a cowboy? You bet--and it's not a comedy? Well, it is comic, for sure, a strange farce, and its exaggerations are worth the look, verging on the cusp of camp, or parody. Brian Donlevy and lead man Glenn Ford are totally serious, though, and Ford especially (as the main character) gives the film depth. There are fistfights and bucking broncos and stern men drinking stern whiskey, and through it all there remains a slightly baffled Jack Lemmon. There are strange moments, like when one cowboy is rubbing whiskey and salt into Lemmon's behind, and another scene where they throw a rattlesnake around just for fun, a man dying as a result.You'd think this slightly weird stuff would throw you out of the movie, but it has the effect of making the people more real, and the events more palpable. The second half of the movie becomes increasingly normal and serious.So what holds it back? It goes partly back to the director, I think, and his editor, making the thing just a hair awkward at times. Throw in the good but routine music and photography, as well as a story that lacks finesse, and you get this odd and not quite satisfying affair.

"Cowboy" examines the relationship between partners in a herd, the older statesman and highly principled Ford clashing on moral and physical grounds with the younger, disrespectful, hot headed Lemmon. During a tumultuous droving journey, the two men gain a mutual respect for one another, their generational differences merging through shared experiences with marauding Indians, troublesome hired hands, and the pitfalls of controlling a thousand head of cattle.Donlevy is effective as a seasoned hired hand, eager to hang up his gun and forge a retirement nest egg, but his untimely end is denied the screen time it deserves. Reliable supporting actor Jaeckel is at his ruthless best, here taking umbrage with another drover's provocation leading to a protracted fisticuffs ending only when Lemmon intervenes moments before Jaeckel knifes his opponent. There's something sinister, maybe even psychopathic about Jaeckel's crazy eyes. A young Dick York also appears in a reasonably prominent supporting role, and in spite of his chaffs and sneer, it remains difficult to divorce him from his future 'Darren Stevens' alter ego from "Bewitched".Grand cast in a low-key western drama, the mediocre action punctuating shallow soliloquy's and sermons on honour, tradition and loyalty. Ford is consciously more aggressive than is usual persona, his steely-eyed determination more than matching Lemmon's youthful ambition. But despite some interesting moments, the plot peaks don't soar high enough to build momentum. Even the penultimate climax in which Lemmon and Ford risk life and limb to stabilise the herd on the train, lacks suspense. It may well be a tough life with perils more realistic than gunslingers and Apaches, but director Daves doesn't adequately convey this on the screen. Not a bad film at all, just unremarkable, run-of-the-mill western fare.