Word: rodeos
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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JUNIOR BONNER begins with a black-and-white fog-grained portrait of the title rodeo star, played acutely by a mellowed Steve McQueen, lowering himself onto a snorting Brahma bull called Sunshine. The rodeo announcer tells us some basic facts: Jr. was a two-year bull-riding champion, now nearing 40, a bit past his prime, Sunshine has never been ridden for the full 8 seconds time. The gate to the pen is thrown open, clowns dressed in baggy checked pants and vests and red fright wigs lure the bull out and get him jumping. Bonner holds...
...again and again to them, split-screen images tuned to the ruffling of the rodeo man's brow, as battered Junior makes his way back to his trailer. Every bit of stable dirt crusting on his boots, every slap of leather chaps against dungarees, even the feel of sweated denim against the man's chest, reminds him of his failure. The champ, good-natured, broadfacedly smiling, watches Bonner tape his bruised midsection. ("Whooiee!" says Twilliger). He also backs up Bonner's white Cadillac to his horse trailer. "Maybe I'd better take up another line of work," says Bonner...
Junior Banner is Peckinpah's most contemporary western, set in Prescott, Ariz., a town that hews to the traditions of the past by holding a rodeo every year even as its outskirts are being bulldozed for a housing development. Ace (Robert Preston) used to be a champ, a great bull rider who once performed in Madison Square Garden and talked to Jack Dempsey as one champion to another. Now he devotes most of his time to hustling up a stake...
...other son Junior (Steve McQueen) is a rodeo rider with a single obsession: to ride an especially violent bull, a feat that will spell his father's long shadow. Incredibly, Junior triumphs, buys Ace a one-way ticket to Australia and then blows town, letting his father look for a new frontier while Brother Curly plows the old one under...
This is the third in the current bumper crop of rodeo movies...