La soga de la horca

This is a typically glossy late John Wayne western. Wayne plays Cahill a US Marshall whose job has meant that he has somewhat neglected his kids. When they decide to rob a bank with the help of George Kennedy and his gang they find themselves in trouble.

John Wayne looks pretty tired in this although he still has a great screen presence. The film is essentially about a man's relationship with his sons and as such there is relatively little action. This is itself is no bad thing but it's just that the plot is a little too thin to carry the film. As a result it's just intermittently interesting mainly when George Kennedy is on screen.

This is John Wayne in reflective mood but it's just not comparable to his great performance in the brilliant 'The Shootist'.

Overall although watchable there's just not enough of interest here to make this anything but an average western.

While US Marshall Cahill (John Wayne) hunts outlaws, his wayward sons get in way over their heads when the supposedly safe, after-hours bank robbery plan with slimy saddle-tramp George Kennedy turns into a bloodbath. When Cahill returns and ends up arresting innocent men, it sends the two youths scrambling to do the right thing.

Though one of Wayne's later, less acclaimed movies, there's still a whole lot of fun to be had in this well produced, action filled morality tale.

Kennedy is in truly fine form here as a truly vile bad guy, while Neville Brand, who's usually typecast as despicable villains and psychopathic cretins, delivers a standout, heroic performance as Wayne's halfbreed sidekick.

The tense, bloody climax is pretty good.

As Wayne aged, either he or someone working for him began pairing him with a series of young actors, which was a pretty good idea. In CAHILL, a routine western from the early 1970s, that youthful role was filled by Gary (SUMMER OF '42) Grimes as U.S. Marshal Cahill's rebellious teenage son Danny. The kid has gotten involved with some pretty nasty bank robbers, led by squinty eyed, mustachioed George Kennedy. Cahill doesn't know this, and goes off in search of the robbers while Danny and his little brother decide to defy and deal with the robbers, who killed the town sheriff during the robbery. Several old-time actors are in the cast, including Marie Windsor and Denver Pyle, but most notable is Neville Brand as Cahill's favorite tracker, a wisecracking, self-proclaimed Indian chief who is actually half white. While CAHILL was shot in Mexico, it is painfully apparent that some scenes were shot on soundstages, which hurts the story's believability factor. Also, while director Andrew McLaughlin was well known for his action movies, some of the fights and gun battles here are clumsily staged at best. Wayne was getting on in years and appears tired a lot of the time, but he plays the role this way, so we buy into it. He would do this again in THE SHOOTIST, to similar effect. The highlight of the movie is clearly George Kennedy, playing one of the meanest, low-down, no-good villains to be found in a Wayne western. There is a whole generation that only knows Kennedy as the buffoonish sergeant in the NAKED GUN movies, but an older generation remembers his amazing performance in COOL HAND Luke and several other movies of that period. His piercing stare and sneer here are priceless, and he goes out in high fashion.

Released in 1973 and directed by Andrew V. McLaglen, "Cahill United States Marshal" is a Western starring John Wayne as the titular marshal and Neville Brand as his half-Native tracker in the Southwest. Widower Cahill is so busy with his work that he's neglectful of his two sons, 10 and 17, and thus they veer toward delinquency, hooking up with a group of ne'er-do-wells (led by George Kennedy). After getting away with robbing a bank, the sons must deal with the moral conundrum of a (dubious) group of men being hanged for a crime they didn't commit.

The Duke had some great or near great Westerns in the final two decades of his career (e.g. "The Horse Soldiers," "The Alamo," "The Comancheros," "El Dorado," "True Grit," "The Cowboys," "The Train Robbers" and "Rooster Cogburn"), but "Cahill" isn't one of 'em. While I appreciate that Wayne tried to do something different by having the story focus on the ramifications of his neglected kids, the movie simply isn't very compelling and the boys aren't interesting as characters. It doesn't help that Kennedy is decidedly cartoony as the villain. Disregarding the awesome Western locations, the storytelling smacks of a 60s or 70's TV show Western.

Yet, if you're a Duke fan, "Cahill" is mandatory viewing. The relationship between Cahill and the tracker (Brand) is a highlight, as is the Western scenery. Speaking of the latter, the movie is further hampered by three nighttime sequences obviously shot in the studio, which appear at the beginning, middle and end, but that's a minor cavil.

The film runs 103 minutes and was shot in Sonora, Mexico; Arizona; and Calderon Ranch, California. The screenplay was written by Harry & Rita Fink based on Barney Slater's story.

GRADE: C

An American Western. A story about a veteran law officer who realises that his sons have turned to a life of crime while he is away tracking down law breakers. John Wayne musters up some spirit as a hard-nosed old-timer but he is weighed down not least by a tacky, preachy script about the extent to which modern youth corrupts. It all ends predictably as the widower realises he is partly responsible, due his neglect. An unavoidable impression is that this film has a drowsy pace with some pretty stiff acting from the younger cast. Despite George Kennedy's good performance and best effort to create some menace and tension as outlaw and ringleader, he, and Wayne, are let down because the material is not directed with much verve.