Old blood and guts Sam Peckinpah said of this film of his that no guns were fired and nobody died in it but also that nobody went to see it. Even so, it's still his readily identifiable movie with trademark cross-cutting, slow-motion action and split-screen devices all to the fore.
Steve McQueen is the title character, a latter-day cowboy born about a hundred years too late who lives for the next rodeo show which he follows around from town to town. There's one mean old bull he's determined to ride for the requisite eight seconds to claim the prize and when he fails to do it at one show, he rolls onto the next one to try again.
He has a wastrel pa, Robert Preston, who spins tall tales and dreams of going to Australia to prospect for gold, ma Ida Lupino is the definition of long-suffering and a younger brother on his way to making his first million selling real estate. Shot on location in Arizona, Junior follows the travelling circus to the next rodeo location, flits in and out of his kin's dysfunctional lives, raises a little hell and takes love where he can find it, usually a one-night-stand with another man's girl, but his conquests don't seem to mind.
Me, I don't care for the rodeo much, mainly because I don't like the way the animals are treated at the shows and I care for country and western music even less but it's obvious that Peckinpah and McQueen do. Steve sure rocks the old double-denim look while Sam does a good job encapsulating small-town life out west especially when the show hits the town.
Light in content as well as characterisation, we don't learn much more about Junior after the first five minutes or so, but by then we've identified him as a tough, lonesome but likeable old cowpoke and are happy to spend some time with him even if nothing much happens to him and we don't really get to know him. Still, the rodeo scenes and requisite bar-room brawl are entertainingly filmed, the latter only coming to a halt when the band starts playing "The Stars And Stripes Forever".
The shooting and killing would return for the following collaboration between star and director, the contemporary heist movie "The Getaway" but this was an entertaining if not compulsory stopping-off point, although as someone says in the film, if you've seen one rodeo you've pretty much seen them all, even as I don't doubt the same people watch and participate in them in the same towns to this day.
Steve McQueen is the title character, a latter-day cowboy born about a hundred years too late who lives for the next rodeo show which he follows around from town to town. There's one mean old bull he's determined to ride for the requisite eight seconds to claim the prize and when he fails to do it at one show, he rolls onto the next one to try again.
He has a wastrel pa, Robert Preston, who spins tall tales and dreams of going to Australia to prospect for gold, ma Ida Lupino is the definition of long-suffering and a younger brother on his way to making his first million selling real estate. Shot on location in Arizona, Junior follows the travelling circus to the next rodeo location, flits in and out of his kin's dysfunctional lives, raises a little hell and takes love where he can find it, usually a one-night-stand with another man's girl, but his conquests don't seem to mind.
Me, I don't care for the rodeo much, mainly because I don't like the way the animals are treated at the shows and I care for country and western music even less but it's obvious that Peckinpah and McQueen do. Steve sure rocks the old double-denim look while Sam does a good job encapsulating small-town life out west especially when the show hits the town.
Light in content as well as characterisation, we don't learn much more about Junior after the first five minutes or so, but by then we've identified him as a tough, lonesome but likeable old cowpoke and are happy to spend some time with him even if nothing much happens to him and we don't really get to know him. Still, the rodeo scenes and requisite bar-room brawl are entertainingly filmed, the latter only coming to a halt when the band starts playing "The Stars And Stripes Forever".
The shooting and killing would return for the following collaboration between star and director, the contemporary heist movie "The Getaway" but this was an entertaining if not compulsory stopping-off point, although as someone says in the film, if you've seen one rodeo you've pretty much seen them all, even as I don't doubt the same people watch and participate in them in the same towns to this day.