Hawg-Tied and Saddle Sore

By M.G.

Chet: Mary and I are gonna get married.

Monte: How's that gonna work out, you bein' a cowboy?

Chet: I'm gonna be a hardware man.

Monte: You gonna live in town?

Chet: Nobody gets to be a cowboy forever.

Dang right, pardner. Not even the redoubtable Lee Marvin, sadly cast in the title role of Monte Walsh. He and Chet (Jack Palance) amble vaguely across Southwestern cattle country, swapping hand-rolled cigarettes and saddle-sore lines that would make a dogie bleat in an guish. Screenwriters Lukas Heller and David Goodman apparently drew their ideas from The Misfits and The Wild Bunch and hawg-tied them with early Zane Grey dialogue. The resulting wrangle is a tale of aging cowpokes in a changing West that ain't worth the price of a good branding iron.

In classic westerns, the Bad Guys were easily recognizable by their black hats. Here they are unseen Eastern accountants, identified as bad because they call money "capital." The banks have taken over one of the last of the big spreads, and Monte and Chet hire on for want of more respectable work. Chet eventually gives it all up to wed the hardware-store widow, but Monte won't relinquish his ways even for the golden-hearted, dross-tongued whore (Jeanne Moreau) he loves. By the time the film ends, just about everyone has been killed off except Marvin and Director Wil liam Fraker, who might well have been the first target.

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