Big Jake

A very entertaining John Wayne western. Richard Boone makes a great villian. It's action packed much more in the style of a Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry picture than a vintage John Wayne. Most highly recommended of Wayne's movies in the post-True Grit period.

He is not dead...NOT HARDLY!! This movie was great. I can't believe I had never seen it. I loved the way he put his kids in place every time they got out of line. Especially that guy with the mustache (Wayne's real life son). I have seldom seen movies where there is so much suspense. The mean man with the blanket was super good also at being a MEAN AND BAD GUY!!!! John Wayne is the best cowboy ever. He looked and acted tough and was apparently TOUGH in real life. I wish Maureen O'Hara would have been in this movie more. She is so good looking. John Wayne was so fearless. I loved the way he bled RED PAINT. Back then, the blood looked like RED PAINT. Haha.

I give this movie a perfect 10!

A later John Wayne western that contains a surprising amount of graphic violence. This is by no means another "Wild Bunch" but there are more bloody gunshot wounds than usual.

The plot concerns the search and rescue of a kidnapped grandson that Wayne has never seen.

The banter between Jacob McCandles(Wayne) and his estranged sons is the source of many of the film's great lines. When Patrick Wayne tries to provoke the Duke by calling him "Daddy", the retort by the old man is priceless.

A good villan(Richard Boone), another pairing with Maureen O'Hara, some great one-liners and several references to older Wayne films make this a great choice from the westerns section at Blockbuster. Elmer Bernstein's music is wonderful too, sounding much like his "Magnificent Seven" score.

This was a John Wayne film I greatly enjoy and was surprised at the wonderful old automobiles from the 1900's driving up and down every trail and even motorcycles. John Wayne played the role as Jacob McCandles who was looked up to as a man you did not mess with and respected. Maureen O'Hare, (Martha McCandles) seeks the help of her husband after years of being separated when their grandchild is kidnapped for a ransom for One Million Dollars. The gang of crooks is headed by Richard Boone, (John Fain) who will kill women and children in cold blood and think nothing of it. Patrick Waynes son has a role in this film along with the Polish Prince of Music and Song, Bobby Vinton. Maureen O'Hara had a very brief appearance only in the beginning and end of this film and this was also the last film that Wayne and O'Hara appeared together. Very entertaining film, you will not want to miss this great film Classic from 1971.

Mark this down as a very entertaining western with more realistic gunfight scenes than most films, meaning the good guys get shot as well as the villains. John Wayne's "The Searchers," a very similar movie story-wise, gets a lot better press than this film but "Big Jake" is just as good, if not better.

To be fair, while the gunfights in here were well done, the fistfights were an insult. Whenever someone got slugged, such as Wayne belting his kids, it had no effect on them, except just to knock them down for a second or two. In real life, folks, chances are you will knocked unconscious if you are hit in the face, especially by a powerful man like Wayne. This has been a ludicrous fact-of-life, however, in all films for 100 years, not just here.

Other than that, the film is a straight hard-nosed one with Wayne and adversary Richard Boone both fascinating. The dialog between the two was especially fun to hear. Too bad there wasn't more of it. Boone did not have enough lines in this film. Wayne's real-life sons in this film didn't impress me with their acting but they weren't horrible either.

Bruce Cabot was a hoot as an old Indian friend of Wayne's. As with most westerns, there is some nice scenery so if you have the opportunity, watch this on widescreen DVD. It was nice-looking movie.