The Sons of Katie Elder (1965)
Country: US
Technical: col/scope 122m
Director: Henry Hathaway
Cast: John Wayne, Dean Martin, Michael Anderson Jnr, Earl Holliman, George Kennedy, Martha Hyer
Synopsis:
Ne'er-do-well sons of a respected Texan matriarch arrive to attend her funeral and start asking questions about the suspicious demise of their father and loss of the family ranch to a local capitalist.
Review:
Slightly less amiable than usual Wayne/Hathaway collaboration, prefiguring True Grit in its picture of unscrupulous villainy and compromised lead (here playing against type as a gunfighter). It's a handsome and reasonably pacy production, with an excellent baddie in James Gregory, but the subplot involving the purchase of some horses goes nowhere and Bernstein's score is somewhat self-derivative. Also, the idea that these men with forty years or more between them are all brothers is rather hard to swallow. Nevertheless, it is a solid western of the old school, concerned with the moral force of justice and the notion that self-betterment is the only way to civilize the West - for better or worse.
Country: US
Technical: col/scope 122m
Director: Henry Hathaway
Cast: John Wayne, Dean Martin, Michael Anderson Jnr, Earl Holliman, George Kennedy, Martha Hyer
Synopsis:
Ne'er-do-well sons of a respected Texan matriarch arrive to attend her funeral and start asking questions about the suspicious demise of their father and loss of the family ranch to a local capitalist.
Review:
Slightly less amiable than usual Wayne/Hathaway collaboration, prefiguring True Grit in its picture of unscrupulous villainy and compromised lead (here playing against type as a gunfighter). It's a handsome and reasonably pacy production, with an excellent baddie in James Gregory, but the subplot involving the purchase of some horses goes nowhere and Bernstein's score is somewhat self-derivative. Also, the idea that these men with forty years or more between them are all brothers is rather hard to swallow. Nevertheless, it is a solid western of the old school, concerned with the moral force of justice and the notion that self-betterment is the only way to civilize the West - for better or worse.
Country: US
Technical: col/scope 122m
Director: Henry Hathaway
Cast: John Wayne, Dean Martin, Michael Anderson Jnr, Earl Holliman, George Kennedy, Martha Hyer
Synopsis:
Ne'er-do-well sons of a respected Texan matriarch arrive to attend her funeral and start asking questions about the suspicious demise of their father and loss of the family ranch to a local capitalist.
Review:
Slightly less amiable than usual Wayne/Hathaway collaboration, prefiguring True Grit in its picture of unscrupulous villainy and compromised lead (here playing against type as a gunfighter). It's a handsome and reasonably pacy production, with an excellent baddie in James Gregory, but the subplot involving the purchase of some horses goes nowhere and Bernstein's score is somewhat self-derivative. Also, the idea that these men with forty years or more between them are all brothers is rather hard to swallow. Nevertheless, it is a solid western of the old school, concerned with the moral force of justice and the notion that self-betterment is the only way to civilize the West - for better or worse.