American Myth: The Western Movie Blog

“Nevada Smith” begins poorly, caries on badly, and ends hysterically with Karl Malden bleeding to death in a mountain stream and screaming at Steve McQueen. Yes I just spoiled the ending, but I also saved you from sitting through two hours of convoluted chaos. This film takes a simple premise and turns it into a jumbled Western that you’ll ultimately forget.               At the beginning of the film we meet Max Sands who is played by Steve McQueen. Max (again played by 35 year old, blond-haired, blue-eyed McQueen) is a 16 year old, half-Kiowa boy, and if that’s hard to imagine then buckle up because this movie will push your suspension of disbelief to the limit. Max’s parents are tortured to death by three desperadoes, (Karl Malden, Martin Landau, and Arthur Kennedy.) Burning with rage, Max sets out on a very long quest to get revenge on the men who killed his family. Along the way he meets Jonas Cord (Brian Ke...

On multiple levels, "The Horse Soldiers" is the halfway point between “The Searchers” and “The Man who shot Liberty Valance.” The eleventh collaboration between John Ford and John Wayne, the film was released in 1959, three years after “The Searchers” and three years before “Liberty Valance.” Yet the “The Horse Soldiers” is not only a bridge between these two films chronologically. The film marks a shift in Ford’s perspective on the West, as he slowly grows disenchanted with its myths.             The film takes place in 1863 during Grant’s siege of Vicksburg. Colonel John Marlowe (John Wayne) is a tough as nails cavalry commander who is ordered to lead his brigade behind enemy lines and destroy a Confederate rail hub. Cut off from supplies and surrounded by hostile rebels, Marlowe must complete his objective and lead his men safely back to Union lines, or else he’ll spend the rest of the war in Andersonville prison. T...

William Wyler’s “The Big Country” is big, so big it’s unwieldy. At two hours and forty-six minutes long, the film is meant to be an epic, and while there’s breathtaking cinematography and towering performances from the supporting cast, the overall pace of the film is uneven. We shift from epic stampedes and gunfights to painfully slow reactions shots that feel like the editor fell asleep at the Steenbeck.             The film opens with James McKay (Gregory Peck) arriving at a dusty small town in the middle of nowhere. McKay is an ex-sea captain from back East, a literal fish out of water who has come to marry Patricia Terrill (Carroll Baker). Patricia is a spoiled ranch heiress who is doted upon her father Major Henry Terrill (Charles Bickford), a wealthy landowner who is embroiled in a water war with the Hannassey’s, a rival clan of uncouth cowboys. As McKay adapts to life in the West, he soon finds himself in the mi...