Very well executed

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

A rag-tag group of young teenagers volunteer to help John Wayne get his 1500 head of cattle to market, 400 miles away, and Wayne is stuck in a jam because all of his hired hands get the gold fever and run off. Faced with bills and the habit of driving his cattle every summer, Wayne takes on the role of drive master, mentor, teacher, and father to the lot of them. And the inexperienced teens prove resourceful and reliable, maturing quickly on the dusty trail. OK, none of the young actors in the film went on to any big Hollywood success. But, their limited acting skills actually added to the schtick of the set-up.Trailed and eventually ambushed by rustlers, the kids lose Wayne and their herd in a flurry of bullets that put the Duke in the grave. An endearing drive cook, Roscoe Lee Brown (cudos) steps up as the step-father of the crew, and the boys go after the rustlers to retrieve the herd in memory of Wayne.A good story, solid writing, and on-site cinematography make the movie, with Wayne's performance, of course. Direction is subpar, especially with the typical Hollywood intentional gaffs. The rustler gang consists of nine men, but after the boys ambush and kill four of them, there are suddenly ten members of the gang coming after them. It's annoying that directors want the viewer absorbed into the visual tale, but also to forgive the inconsistencies and the details. At some points along the drive, it looks like Wayne is really driving 1500 head. At other times, it looks like the entire herd is about 80 cattle, and at other times, it appears to consist of maybe 200 head. This kind of laziness in direction only serves to distract the viewer.All in all, a deserving film, with a young Bruce Dern playing a really, really bad outlaw. A typical Western prop character that you can really hate if you are into the action.A worthwhile two hours spent with a good film despite some flaws.

Released in 1972 and directed by Mark Rydell, "The Cowboys" stars John Wayne as an aging rancher who is forced to hire pubescent drovers for a 400-mile cattle drive from Bozeman, Montana, to Belle Fourche, South Dakota, after his ranch hands abandon him for a gold rush. Roscoe Lee Browne plays the wise black cook while Slim Pickens & Colleen Dewhurst have small roles. This is a realistic, almost epic Wayne Western focusing on the long cattle drive and the amateur boys learning to be men. It lacks the fun brawling and unrealistic elements of John's contemporary Westerns of the 60s-70s (e.g. the quick-draw nonsense in "El Dorado"). A Martinez stands out as the outcast Hispanic amongst the kids while Bruce Dern is notable as a menacing ne'er-do-well. The almost shocking confrontation that opens the final act is a highlight and the boys' just strategy is great: KILL 'EM ALL. The film runs 134 minutes and was shot in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Warner Brothers Burbank Studios, California. The screenplay was based on William Dale Jennings's novel. GRADE: A-

John Wayne plays a rancher in desperate need of cowboys for a cattle drive after his men quit to try their luck at mining gold. So he's forced to take on a group of schoolboys and teach them the ways of the cowboy. An enjoyable western with a good cast. Duke's terrific and has fine support from Roscoe Lee Browne, Slim Pickens, and Colleen Dewhurst. The younger actors playing the cowboys of the title are all pretty good. Robert Carradine makes his film debut here. Bruce Dern is a particularly nasty villain. Nice music and solid script. It's a little longer than it needs to be but I don't think it wears out its welcome. It's got humor, drama, and action. Not his best but one of the better movies Duke made in the '70s.

People say (and write) many things about this movie, most commonly that it's some sort of a "message" movie, or allegory, about the war in Vietnam. Whether it is or isn't (and I say it isn't), it doesn't matter a whit. The movie stands on its own merits as (1) a fine movie, (2) a John Wayne movie --one of his last, (3) telling a good story, (4) a coming-of-age story, (5) with fine acting all the way around. In addition to The Duke, we have Roscoe Lee Browne playing the role of cook and philosopher, charming, dignified, and charismatic, and Bruce Dern, occupying the role and position of probably the all-time most evil "bad guy" villain in cinematic westerns history, and Dern more than delivers the goods. Through it all, the movie remains a coming of age story for the ages, and the proof is in the fact that it stands up well, even now, 43 years after its release.I believe the controversy stems from the fact that it's a John Wayne movie, and he was a known hawk when it came to the war. So people read into that what they want to read into that. But simple logic dictates otherwise, that this movie is not about the war. Wayne would never have participated in an anti-war film, so that rules that out. And Bruce Dern and director Mark Rydell were both known for their liberal and anti-war politics, and would not have signed on to a pro-war movie. Ergo, the movie was not making any kind of direct and intentional statement about the war, for or against. It's a bit ironical for me personally that the film carries with it that pro Vietnam war or anti Vietnam war controversy, either way (and people say both things about it). I was in Japan on R&R from Vietnam when I saw this movie in the Spring of 1972, in a Japanese theater amusingly dubbed into Japanese with English subtitles. To this day I still don't know why they did that. Why not just Japanese subtitles? But the buzz about the movie at the time was not that it was pro-war or anti-war, and I never heard any such theory like that until many years later. The only popular buzz about this movie in 1972 had to do with the nature and fact of the demise of John Wayne's character.