doug-balch Review of Chisum

Chisum (1970)

One of the better of Wayne's late Westerns

[5/10 · 9 July 2010]

This was pretty good overall.

Here's what I liked:

• Wayne's very good as usual here. It's nice to see him finally drop the love interest that was so inappropriate in most of the movies he made after the age of 55.

• Some good supporting cast performances, especially Ben Johnson and Forrest Tucker.

• Pretty good story, based pretty solidly on real events of the Lincoln County range war in New Mexico.

• Tunstall's mentoring of Billy the Kid was very similar to "The Left Handed Gun", the 1958 film where Paul Newman played Billy. I wonder if this is based in fact?

Christoper George isn't bad here, reprising his henchman role from "El Dorado".

Here's what kept it from being better:

• A critical character in this movie is Billy the Kid. He is horribly miscast here by an actor with zero charisma. Because he has no personality, it's a little hard to understand his contradictory behavior in the movie. This almost leads to serious plausibility issues.

• The whole thing is a little too much by the numbers. Sometimes feels like a big budget episode of Bonanza.