Junior Bonner ***** (1972, Steve McQueen, Robert Preston, Ida Lupino, Ben Johnson, Joe Don Baker) – Classic Movie Review 3532

Director Sam Peckinpah’s quiet 1972 Western masterpiece tells the beautiful, elegaic tale of a middle-aged rodeo star who finds a disturbed family clashing with property developers when he goes back to his Arizona home for a contest. The elegy is for the death the old West, forced to give up the ghost in the name of the false values of progress.

Steve McQueen is at his excellent best as Junior ‘JR’ Bonner in this thoughtful, deeply felt art-house film from the director of slap-up violent Westerns. Old-time actors Ida Lupino and Robert Preston eagerly grab rare late-career chances to shine as McQueen’s separated old mother Elvira and father Ace, the mom living in a caravan and the dad hospitalised after a drunken brawl.

Ace Bonner returns to Prescott, Arizona, after abandoning his family to find gold in Australia. Family drama erupts when Junior Bonner, a broke and broken rodeo pro on the wrong side of 40, heads into town for the annual 4th of July Frontier Days rodeo championship.

The material is similar to Cliff Robertson’s J W Coop, which appeared at around this time, but this is the one that rightly garnered most of the plaudits. There is magnificent work on screenplay by Jeb Rosebrook, camera by Lucien Ballard and score by Jerry Fielding – simply the best.

Also in the cast are Ben Johnson as old-timer Buck Roan, Joe Don Baker as JR’s real estate brother Curly Bonner, Barbara Leigh as the beautiful Charmagne who catches JR’s eye, Mary Murphy as Ruth Bonner, Bill McKinney as Red Terwiliger, Dub Taylor as Del, Sandra Deel as Nurse Arlis, Don ‘Red’ Barry as Homer Rutledge and Charles H Gray as Burt, with Matthew Peckinpah as Tim Bonner and Sundown Spencer as Nick Bonner.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3532

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