If you’re talent-spotting Bill Bixby (television’s The Incredible Hulk, 1977-1982) is a helicopter pilot. And there’s an early role for Carroll O’Connor ( The Devil’s Brigade, 1968). George Kennedy ( Cool Hand Luke, 1967) makes a mean sadistic cop.
Gena Rowlands ( Machine Gun McCain, 1969) is impressive as Paul’s worn-down wife with a soft spot for Jack though she finds it hard to stand by a dumb man.
#Lonely are the brave plus#
On the plus side is some notable playing by Walter Matthau ( Mirage, 1965), encumbered with a bunch of lazy cops who spend more time eating and sleeping than doing their job and easily outgunned in the wilderness by a cowboy for whom it spells home. And, as usual, given he is top-billed, reveals acting insecurity, or arrogance, trying to steal every scene, tipping back his hat just one of his many bits of business to ensure the audience eye follows him.
#Lonely are the brave movie#
Once the movie heads into the hills, which is what all this lengthy preamble is for, it becomes more interesting, if only because in what is intended to be a game of cat-and-mouse, the cop cats are revealed as the mice.īut Kirk Douglas, having lit a fire for freedom in Spartacus (1961), seems more intent on going down a similar route than creating a proper character. The picture off to a good start in the London West End. stands for Rank Film Distributors, patting itself on the head for getting Cops, with all the modern accoutrements, find themselves undone by a man with old world skills. Paul, knowing he has crossed a line in the contemporary world, just wants to pay his debt and move on, rather than trying to disappear into a fantasy life. There’s a nod towards immigrants swarming into America.
Jack, wanting to start a brawl as a means of being arrested, finds himself with a tougher customer than he envisaged, a World War Two veteran who doesn’t take prisoners. And it seems a bit of an unlikely cliché that you can still break out of prison in the 1960s with just small hacksaw.ĭavid ( Hammerhead, 1968) Miller’s film tries too hard to make a very obvious point, forgetting that it was cowboys like Jack who turned the West into the antithesis of freedom. Jack won a Purple Heart in Korea but although he was 22 when World War Two broke out there’s no mention of that war record. And instead of leading a frightened beast across a busy highway rides him in clear danger.Īnd I don’t get this voluntary incarceration malarkey, highly principled though it appears, breaking into jail in order to break out a friend Paul (Michael Kane) who just wants to serve out his relatively short sentence instead of being faced with a longer one as an escapee. A man who refused to be tamed tames a wild horse, his freedom coming at the expense of a captive animal, hobbled overnight to prevent escape. The only problem for me are certain inconsistencies. You can see the end coming a mile off, a truck that interrupts the narrative for no particular reason. Freedom-loving, don’t-fence-me-in Jack Burns (Kirk Douglas) falls foul of the law by escaping prison and is pursued into the hills by competent and sympathetic Sheriff Morey Johnson (Walter Matthau) who is saddled with an incompetent law enforcement team out of their depth up against a true man of the west. Wannabe blood brother to The Misfits (1961) but more like a distant cousin, cowboy out-of-time yarn too pre-emptive for its own good.
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