In '71, even as the counterculture swelled and the Vietnam war raged on, Wayne still packed 'em into theaters.........and this film, one of our favorite Waynes, is a wildly uneven Jekyll And Hyde concoction that mixes quintessential good-hearted Wayne adventures with the brutal, cruel nihilistic violence that had now fully infected both American society and its films......
46 years after first seeing "Big Jake", we still don't know what to make of it. Initially written by Harry Juilen Fink and his wife Rita, the creators of 'Dirty Harry', it veers crazily between the jokey male bonding of a Ford or Hawks western and the vicious bloodbaths you'd usually only encounter in Leone and Peckinpah films.....
After a semi-sarcastic turn-of-the-century-newsreel prologue that leads you to believe the film might be one of those hip, revisionist westerns, a la "Butch Cassidy", it gets down to gory business......the merciless attack on a ranch by a heartless soldier-of-fortune (Richard Boone) and his band of equally depraved, scary gunmen. (This group includes a hefty bearded Bluto who hacks up women with his machete while Elmer Bernstein's normally jaunty score wails in dire alarm.)
Boone has picked the wrong ranch to stage his slaughter and kidnap a young child......the ranch belongs to Wayne's estranged wife (Maureen O'Hara making her farewell appearance with Wayne)....and boy is Wayne's youngest grandson....(actually played by Wayne's own young son, Ethan).
Neither Wayne nor O'Hara will tolerate any of this million dollar ransom nonsense demanded by the malevolent Boone and his cutthroats.....
So off Wayne goes, with his two equally estranged grown sons(Patrick Wayne and Chris Mitchum, son of Robert) and his, dare we say it.....faithful Indian companion, warmly played by Bruce Cabot.....
By now, you get the idea that this all this family estrangement comes primarily from Wayne's character being one singularly tough, unpleasant son-of-a-bitch. And he rambunctiously revels in it, frequently punching out his upstart boys when they unwisely give him attitude....
And lethal attitude is what this movie's all about, as Wayne and his merry band confront Boone, one of the foulest most flat out dangerous villains you'll ever see in a Wayne film. In between all the friendly joshin' and jokin', the film piles up a record body count worthy of any \Clint Eastwood "Dollars" movie. And take our word for it, some of these bad hombres die hard, taking point blank shotgun blasts....
The Fink writing also team provides Wayne, who famously turned down 'Dirty Harry' with a 'Dirty Harry'-worthy dialogue mantra....which ends with "whatever happens....I'm gonna blow your head off....") But we sincerely doubt the Finks had anything to do with the comedic rough-housing scenes inserted into the film like using sugar cookies to garnish a steak cooked blood red rare....
Schizophrenic in the extreme......yet there isn't a minute of it that isn't robustly entertaining......especially the all too few memorable confrontations between the taciturn Wayne and his slimy, loquacious nemesis Boone. We'll saddle up 3 & 1/2 stars...(***1/2). To quote Wayne as he tantalizes the greedy Boone with the ransom money...."it's the stuff dreams are made of..."
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