Snake River
Bronco Billy (1980)
directed by Clint Eastwood
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Honkytonk Man starred Clint Eastwood's son; Bronco Billy gets his girlfriend. And this is the zinger, from Bronco Billy (Clint) to Antoinette Lily (Sondra Locke), a newly minted bride on the run: “There must be 13 year-olds who are more woman than you are.”
What an old-fashioned charmer.
Eastwood tries to make amends for the movie's title sequence ballad "Cowboys and Clowns" by inviting Merle Haggard to play a set at an Idaho bar. It's a nice respite for honest citizens - like the people you find out west - until the plot needs some country hicks to attempt a rape on Ms. Lily, at which point those otherwise decent Boise patrons are only too happy to oblige. Billy saves the day, of course, with promises of spankings, public insults, and the occasional stern threat to come.
But he loves her, I guess, about as much as Clint probably loved Sondra. So it doesn’t matter that Eastwood actually directs a gentle, melancholy fantasy made beautiful by a great cinematographer. It doesn't matter that a scene in which a troupe of Wild West showmen stages a real-life train robbery is a great movie on its own. It doesn't matter because that creepy misogynistic undercurrent just keeps rolling, rolling along. The re-assessment of Unforgiven begins now.
directed by Clint Eastwood
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Honkytonk Man starred Clint Eastwood's son; Bronco Billy gets his girlfriend. And this is the zinger, from Bronco Billy (Clint) to Antoinette Lily (Sondra Locke), a newly minted bride on the run: “There must be 13 year-olds who are more woman than you are.”
What an old-fashioned charmer.
Eastwood tries to make amends for the movie's title sequence ballad "Cowboys and Clowns" by inviting Merle Haggard to play a set at an Idaho bar. It's a nice respite for honest citizens - like the people you find out west - until the plot needs some country hicks to attempt a rape on Ms. Lily, at which point those otherwise decent Boise patrons are only too happy to oblige. Billy saves the day, of course, with promises of spankings, public insults, and the occasional stern threat to come.
But he loves her, I guess, about as much as Clint probably loved Sondra. So it doesn’t matter that Eastwood actually directs a gentle, melancholy fantasy made beautiful by a great cinematographer. It doesn't matter that a scene in which a troupe of Wild West showmen stages a real-life train robbery is a great movie on its own. It doesn't matter because that creepy misogynistic undercurrent just keeps rolling, rolling along. The re-assessment of Unforgiven begins now.
posted by NPK at 6:37 AM
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