Review: Wild Rovers

Aging cowboy William Holden and his younger associate Ryan O’Neal start to become jaded with a life working for rancher Karl Malden that sees them working for a long time and frankly not getting much out of it. They feel that they are wasting their lives. The younger man gets to thinking about earning some quick cash…by robbing a bank! Holden will take bank teller James Olson to the bank at night to get them some cash, while O’Neal will hold up at Olson’s home with his family as hostages. The robbery goes swimmingly, but a problem arises when Malden hears about the robbery. See, Malden normally wouldn’t wish ill against two men who had been working for him, except that some of the money they stole belonged to him! So he and his sons (a young Joe Don Baker and Tom Skerritt) head out in search of the two robbers. Sam Gilman plays a disagreeable sheep herder, Rachel Roberts is a madam, and Moses Gunn is an old buddy of Holden’s.

 

Apparently the 106 minute version of this 1971 western is a choppy mess, and the 136 minute Director’s Cut is a vast improvement. Being that Australia and the US vary in terms of NTSC/PAL and this sees a difference in running times, it’s not always easy to tell what version of a film I’m watching. Here it’s especially perplexing, because although there was no intermission in the version I saw, and it didn’t run 136 minutes, it still ran too much longer than 106 minutes to possibly be the shorter version, and at least some of the material said to be cut was indeed in the version I saw (The only thing I seem to be missing is the overture and intermission, and who gives a fuck about that?). So I’m gonna go ahead and say that I saw the Director’s Cut, and funnily enough, I found it a choppy mess. And that’s a shame, because aside from the awful and amateurish editing, there’s not a whole lot wrong here in this one from writer-director Blake Edwards.

 

Right off the bat, my favourite film score composer Jerry Goldsmith (“The Omen”, “Planet of the Apes”) starts us off with a terrific Elmer Bernstein (“The Magnificent Seven”) imitation. William Holden, meanwhile is a lot more laidback and likeable here than in “The Wild Bunch”, which is good because it’s a different kind of western, and no one would ever confuse Blake Edwards for Sam Peckinpah. Tom Skerritt makes a solid account of himself as the wayward, short-fused son of Karl Malden, and the troubled Rachel Roberts has a hoot an’ a half in a scene-stealing, completely over-the-top performance as a madam. Moses Gunn is also quite memorable in a scene that Gaylord Focker probably saw as a boy (You’ll know what I mean when you see it). Co-lead Ryan O’Neal is merely OK (therefore one of his best performances), but old pro Karl Malden is as sturdy as ever under the very choppy circumstances. It’s also been wonderfully shot by cinematographer Philip H. Lathrop (“The Days of Wine and Roses”, “The Cincinnati Kid”).

 

Unfortunately, the choppy editing really does a major disservice. The cutting between Malden’s family and the Holden/O’Neal partnership is really sloppy and detrimental to the narrative. It takes an hour (too long) to tie the two narrative strands together. Character motivation is also a failure here. I get why O’Neal wants to rob a bank, but there is nothing in the Holden character to suggest that he would ever want to be a part of this. It’s badly done, and if I was indeed watching the Director’s Cut, more’s the shame. The last 40 minutes sees a complete shift in tone to something more Peckinpah-ish, even using slow-mo. It’s jarringly done, and when the ending comes you feel like the whole film has been pointless and senseless. But this is already a film that gives us a potentially interesting antagonist played by Sam Gilman…and pretty much has him disappear before anything can really be done with that story strand.

 

This isn’t a stinker, but the truly shoddy editing makes it hard for me to see this one as underrated. The scenery (some of the best you’ll ever see in a motion picture), cast, and music score are all praiseworthy, however. A disappointing, if watchable mixed bag, reminding me of similar feelings I had about Peckinpah’s “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid”.

 

Rating: C+