Bronc bustin'

Clint Eastwood may have written finis to the Western with "Unforgiven" (although "finis" seems not the right word--maybe ka-pow!) and we miss the movies, not only the classics, like "Stagecoach" and "Escape from Fort Bravo" and "Shane" (Shane!  Come back, Shane!  Pa needs you!  And Ma likes you!  I know she does!  Shayyyyun!) but also those we used to watch on Saturday afternoons--Gene Autry, the Durango Kid, the Three Mesquiteers, Lash LaRue, Hoot Gibson and Ken Maynard. 

A film to remember with pleasure, and happily watch whenever it turns up on TCM, is "The Lusty Men," Nicholas Ray's rodeo yarn, made in 1952.  But it seems also that "The Lusty Men" could be re-shot, this half-century later.

The story is of a bone-weary rodeo veteran who becomes the mentor of a brash wannabe. In the centre is the young rider's wife, looking puzzled/concerned/conflicted.  In the 1952 film, Robert Mitchum played the old bronc-buster, Arthur Kennedy was the ambitious newcomer, and Susan Hayward played the wife.  Arthur Hunnicutt turned up as a rodeo clown, the guy who runs out and distracts a vexed mustang or Brahma bull before things get ugly.

Mitchum, leathery and laconic, was terrific; so were Hayward and Hunnicutt.  But Kennedy, while always an intelligent actor (his best role was Tom in "The Glass Menagerie") seemed not quite right for his part.  For a start, he was three years older than Mitchum.

So in our re-make, we have Brad Pitt as the rodeo veteran; Amy Adams as the wife; and, as the kid--Johnny Depp!  Tell me this wouldn't be a box office smash!  Oh, and the clown?  Bill Murray.  Or maybe Jay Leno.  Or Michael Richards, he may be looking for work.  

Coming out of the gate, we've got a movie that'll buck "Avatar" clear out of the saddle!  For, in Mitchum's memorable words from the '52 "Lusty Men":

"There was never a horse

  That couldn't be rode,

  And never a cowboy

  That couldn't be throwed."