1909. In what’s still not quite a civilized West of the USA, the outlaw gang of John Fain (Richard Boone) attacks the prosperous McCandles ranch, nearly killing one of the family’s sons, while murdering quite a few people and last but not least kidnapping the McCandles’ grandson, Little Jake (Ethan Wayne), for a ransom. Apart from getting together the humungous ransom money of a million dollars, family matriarch Martha (Maureen O’Hara) calls in her estranged husband Jacob aka Big Jake (John Wayne), deeming him the proper kind of brute to deal with brutes.
Jake hasn’t seen (or written to) his sons for over a decade, apparently roaming the West increasing his already huge reputation as a frightening badass, so the family reunion is even more strained than the situation would suggest. But needs must, so Jake has to team up with his sons, the slick-ish James (actual Wayne son Patrick) and the younger Michael (Christopher Mitchum, of course the son of Robert). Everyone will learn a valuable lesson: the best way to solve family troubles is to punch each other in the face a lot, apparently. The bad guys clearly don’t stand a chance.
This final big screen outing directed by George Sherman (he still shot some TV episodes afterwards) is certainly one of the better John Wayne vehicles of its era. It is neither trying to crib from the Spaghetti Western book nor make gestures towards the revisionist Western, which were seldom directions that worked well with Wayne in the lead, instead making much of the more traditional (though not squeaky clean) Western.
There are obviously elements that will not have aged well for every viewer today. It’s not difficult to imagine a reading of the film as celebrating toxic masculinity or some such for all of the scenes in which the male McCandles solve their interpersonal problems by hitting each other in the face (with Wayne inevitably knocking his – grown – sons out). I found this business mostly funny, the film simply realizing that having these larger than life cowboys right at the end of the line for their idea of the West solving their interpersonal problems with a civilized heart to heart (or a stupid shouting match) like you or I would simply doesn’t feel believable in the world of the film, while their solving their problems with companionable violence seems rather fitting to them and their lives, and also funnier.
And this is a film that likes having its little chuckles: apart from the joys of family violence, there’s a lot of comedic business about the contrast between the Old West and all the new ideas and objects that come in from the less rough East, mostly exemplified through Jake’s exasperated reaction to all the new-fangled stuff his sons are into, from automatic guns to motorcycles. Big Jake does of course use this opportunity to put a motorcycle stunt into its Western business, too, for why wouldn’t it? There’s some not completely uninteresting subtext hidden away here too, James and Michael representing young men caught right in the middle between the old and radically new ways, not quite belonging to the former side like Jake, his old buddy Sam Sharpnose (Bruce Cabot) and the villains of the piece do, but also being rather too far away from the places where the new is really happening to be completely part of that, particularly when they go on an old school bandit hunt with their dad.
There’s a lot of cool, classic Western business happening in said bandit hunt too. Sherman seems to go out of his way to include every single type of traditional Western set piece in the movie, all of them realized with great gusto, timing, but also a sense for mood building that’s not always been common in the genre. A particular favourite here is obvious the long showdown between Jake and co and the gang of villains, a showdown that includes a sharpshooter duel, various sub-shootouts, some machete action, and starts with a fantastic staring contest between Wayne and Boone (that also includes some very clever dialogue), both of whom give a hell of a performance against each other. The way Wayne twists Boone’s own threats against him before the shooting really starts is utterly brilliant, hitting home that Wayne may have been an actor with a limited scope but also one who could work wonders inside of it.
Big Jake does very well with its villains, too, providing every one of them with enough (nasty) character to make them memorable threats. On the hero side, things aren’t quite as interesting, but then, part of the point of the whole affair is how larger than life Jake is compared to his surroundings, so him being the centre of non-villainous affairs is not (just) Wayne being vain, but the film following its own argument. Which doesn’t mean there’s nothing of interest happening around him – son Patrick and Chris Mitchum are a lot more expressive here than later in their careers (the latter is in fact repeatedly showing off a range of facial expressions he seems to lose over the next decade). It’s a bit of a shame that Maureen O’Hara’s role isn’t larger than it is, for she quite believably plays the only person in the movie willing and able to call Jake on his shit, and also able to win without punching. But then, Big Jake really isn’t a movie about calling macho heroes on their shit (though the film at least does not approve of Jake just ignoring his family for years) but celebrating them going for one last wild ride before the wild rides stop existing.
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