G | 1 h 19 min | Adventure, Western | 1976
With Dan’s mare Rosie and dog Luke, boy and man hit the trail of the proud, powerful, prankish mustang, who turns out to have a mind of his own: He just won’t be captured.
Dan’s previous tryst with a brutal grizzly, Three Toes, who’d wantonly killed his sheep and injured valiant Luke, is about to come full circle with the beast. Nika might just learn what it takes to be a man.
Westerns bookended screenwriter-producer-director John C. Champion’s filmmaking career as they did McCrea’s acting career. The 71-year-old McCrea on a horse is a pleasure to watch. He’s nimble on his feet, crouching low, stepping light, and kneeling often. You can tell from the crinkles around his eyes that he smiles more than he scowls.
Champion may not have had “The Star-Spangled Banner” in mind when filming Dan’s white hat, red bandana, and blue jacket, but his sweeping shots of the country leave little doubt that his ode is to America. Lovingly, he salutes the ordinary men who built the West with extraordinary resilience.
Cinematographer J. Barry Herron, editor Douglas Robertson, and Champion’s sound crew craft such credible scenes of nature and wildlife that it never feels like there’s a film crew around. You see a cougar, wolves, deer, an owl, snow-capped mountains, gushing streams, swelling rivers, and stately trees.
Champion’s animal trainers get their charges to behave like actors.
Family Western
More profoundly than he lets on, Champion reframes masculinity with a gentler, wiser lens than many filmmakers of Westerns. Contrary to stereotypical strong, silent heroes, his protagonist is talkative, and unashamed of it.
Dan’s lasso serves as a symbol of maturing masculinity, a call to restraint and responsibility. Boys like running free of, if not from, something, and it’s not always a stifling boarding school. Dan’s saying that doing what you like is fine, but doing what you should, is better. For all the times he checks his gun, he fires only when necessary or in self-defense. When they’re camping, Luke can play all he wants. But when there’s work to be done, Dan’s the one telling him to “quit chasing ‘em rabbits.” Of his rodeo days, Dan tells Nika, “All arms and legs and no brains, that was me!”
Through his example of patience and bravery, Dan also teaches Nika that when men want something, they work hard. Together, the duo sweat it out tracking, picking berries that Shoshone finds irresistible, and building a fence to try and corner him.
Dan oozes gentleness. Hear him talk to Rosie, Luke, and Nika, even to himself. He doesn’t sweat the small stuff, “No point in feeling every bump in the road.” Yet, setbacks aren’t excuses to give up. If anything, they’re reminders to keep working harder: “When someone’s doin' their best, all there is, is good luck and bad, both of them are part of living.” Dan figures that, even if the two of them fail, the fact that they’re out there trying their darndest is victory enough.
For all Dan puts into taming, at no point is there a sense of clinging or conquest. He isn’t after Shoshone because he’s got “bronc fever,” as his cowboy buddies tease. Instead, it’s more that he’s looking for and finding the rhythm of country life and fitting into it, learning what needs doing, respecting what doesn’t, then getting on with it.
