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Guitar strings fill the screen à la The Third Man during the credits, then The Wild Bunch is reimagined as a Keaton routine calibrated to Yakima Canutt's stunt work: Gold shipment in Union locomotive plus Confederate saboteurs, grease under the wheels and hornets in the caboose. The Civil War seen from the Vietnam era allows for a divided country amicably reconciled, "no bad feelings" between the Yankee colonel (John Wayne) and the Southern prisoners (Jorge Rivero, Christopher Mitchum). Fighting for your side is a job but selling information is a sin, the search for turncoats leads to the Texas hamlet ruled by a landowner (Victor French) in cahoots with a corrupt sheriff (Mike Henry). The private war after the official one, the road to the cantina shootout has a pit stop on the dentist's chair for a joking echo of The Man Who Knew Too Much. "Is that the only tune you know?" "I don't know this one. That's why I keep practicing." A still further modulation of Howard Hawks' technique like the sawed-off shotgun with the trigger tied back, a work of mementos—the broken-necked soldier on the grass (Only Angels Have Wings), Rivero with coffee cup in the torch-lit cave (Red River), the snake-oil widow (Jennifer O'Neill) with pistol under the saloon table (El Dorado). "Comfortable" is the ultimate insult in a film fixated on aging, the "saintly old man" turns out to be unashamedly cantankerous and cheerfully sadistic, a prime slice of Jack Elam ham. Hawks' farewell is that of classical Hollywood, just a couple of grand geezers on both sides of the camera contemplating soft juveniles and gnarly hooch alike. "Boy, that stuff is not for the young!" With Susana Dosamantes, David Huddleston, Sherry Lansing, Bill Williams, Dean Smith, Robert Donner, Peter Jason, and George Plimpton.
--- Fernando F. Croce |