Reviews

This film is not about Eastwood doing the stock 70's Eastwood, it is not about Sandra Locke, or about any other person's performance. The people in this film are lost, both in the social space of a world they cannot live in and in time. They lack most of the usual human equipment, like faith and hope (see Thomas McGuane's 'Panama'). But they blunder on, as much by default as by will, in the illusory world of Bronco Billy's road show and guided by Billy's real values, with each other. Like most of Eastwood's films, Bronco Billy is built around a story, but in this story how it comes out is not important, it is how Billy and this cast of lost souls get there. And the film has one the greatest lines in cinema history: The one Bronco Billy used to tell Antoinette what happened to his wife.

Viewers who are fans of Titanic and made-for-the-masses, fat part of the bell curve movies are likely to miss the subtle, internal drama, the kind that adults experience, that is going on when there appears to be nothing going on in Choose Me. This film accomplishes what cinema has great trouble doing, capturing and expressing the psychological realities operating even in seemingly banal human events. This is a film for adults who can afford to reflect on life and experience. We all have heard about the junior high girls who saw Titanic fifty times during its run. One wonders how much of an impression was left. I have seen this film several times over the last 18 years, and I found myself recommending it today. It makes a subtle impression that lasts.