grantss Lesser-known John Wayne gem.Set in the 1870s, a veteran rancher, Wil Anderson (played by John Wayne), needs to drive his large herd of cattle to market, over 600 kms away. However, his hired hands have deserted him for the goldfields. As a last resort he hires a group of boys from the local school as his drivers..."cowboys" in the truest sense of the word. What follows is a journey of discovery and a transformation of boys to men...Not your typical John Wayne movie. Wayne is less of the hero here, and more a paternal figure. After all, he was 65 years old when this movie was made, so his days of acting the invincible hero were behind him. However, for all the one-dimensional casting of him as a hero, here he shows a more balanced aspect to his acting. Interesting plot, with a dramatic, un-John Wayne-like twist near the end. Plot development, and some scenes, can be clumsy at times though.As mentioned, good performance from John Wayne. Good work from Bruce Dern, as the villain, plus all of the supporting cast, including the boys.

Edgar Allan Pooh . . . John Wayne, as Wil Anderson (and without irony), tells one of the impressionable youngsters under his tutelage in THE COWBOYS. These words of wisdom come not long after Wil's shouted at a sobbing 10-year-old, "Listen to me, you whining little whelp, you're going to stop that stutter or get the Hell out of here!" Does anyone else see a disconnect here? Of course, it's easy for a scriptwriter to command a child actor WITHOUT A REAL LIFE STUTTER to be instantly "cured" of that "character defect" by "Il Duce's" verbal abuse. In Real Life, Wayne set himself up as a dictator of "American" Values, thinking that if his Big Mouth simply shouted, "Stop being a stutterer! Stop being Gay! Stop being Jewish! Stop being Black! Stop being Liberal! Stop loving our Constitution! Just stop Thinking!" loud enough, he'd be a Big Man in a country carved in His likeness. Wayne famously bad-mouthed Gary Cooper's heroic HIGH NOON sheriff for asking supposedly "ill-suited" ADULTS to form a posse in the face of an existential threat to the entire town. Wayne and his fellow traveler, director Howard Hawks, made RIO BRAVO as a "rebuttal" to HIGH NOON. Now, a few years after RIO BRAVO, Wayne plays a rancher who Shanghais a group of ILL-SUITED 10-year-old BOYS for life-threatening grown-up work just because this rancher is facing a PERSONAL financial setback. Naturally, given Wayne's Real Life prejudices, it's the ill-suited Jewish 10-year-old who dies because of the rancher's hare-brained scheme. Mr. Wayne, have you no decency?!

classicsoncall You would think the plot employed in this movie would have been used extensively before, but I believe this is the first time I've ever run across it. With rancher Wil Andersen's (John Wayne) hired hands going for the gold, he breaks down and hires a passel of young school kids to make a cattle drive. I found it interesting that the schoolmarm Miss Ellen (Allyn Ann McLerie) used a Montgomery Ward catalog for reading lessons because of it's well constructed grammar. Something to think about.I'm reading some of the other reviews here and had to wonder why so many writers called Bruce Dern's character 'Long Hair', presumably because that's how he's listed in the credits for the movie here. He introduced himself to Andersen by the name of Asa Watts before being summarily fired even before being hired. I've seen Dern in these kinds of skeevy roles before, but never so downright vicious. His gunning of Andersen which sets up the movie's final showdown between the cowboy factions is downright brutal. It might have been Wayne's most violent death in film.So you have a gritty coming of age picture here, and I was keenly attentive to see how the film progressed the characters over the course of the story. Starting out as green gilled pre-pubescent young boys for the most part, the process of maturing them along the way was handled quite deftly under the watchful eye of director Mark Rydell. I got a kick out of Roscoe Lee Brown's character when he first came on the scene, questioning Wil Andersen's hiring preferences - "Well, doesn't anything larger wanna work for you?" Clearly if made today, the picture would register it's fair share of opposition for the way the boys sought to avenge their mentor and former trail boss. I don't remember any reaction back when this was made but then again, I wasn't really paying attention. It's an age old dilemma that different generations handle things differently. For my part, I vote with Slim Honeycutt (Robert Carradine) when he says "We're gonna finish the job".

fredww This movie portrays an aging cattleman working with young boys to drive his cattle herd to market. The interaction between the rancher, the boys, the cook (excellently played by Roscoe Lee Brown) and the villains all fit together well and quite believable.This is one of the best movies I have ever seen. Not only is it a great movie, it presents John Wayne in one of his best roles. While it has been six decades since I was the age of the boys portrayed in this movie, I still identify with the feelings expressed by them in their roles.It is a straight story with no hidden agenda. Other reviewers have summarized the story quite well, so I won't go into detail here. The story is not likely to have actually occurred, even in part, in the old west. But it is believable enough that it could have. There is sympathy, action and, and best of all, good character development. There are villains, good guys and heroes. The story line weaves it all together very well.There are no pyrotechnics nor any great special effects. The message is in the dialog and interaction amongst the characters. There is something else that happens in this movie that few other movies include. It has a few throw-away scenes that add to the viewers enjoyment, but don't necessarily affect the theme of the story. One such occurrence is early in the film when Will Anderson explains the struggle between two bulls in the cattle herd.This is a well done movie topped off with a great John Williams score. i recommend it to everyone of all ages.