Tonight’s Movie: Big Jake (1971) at the Lone Pine Film Festival

It's hard to believe that two weeks have already passed since the Saturday evening I enjoyed seeing BIG JAKE (1971) at the Lone Pine Film Festival.

I don't think I'd seen the movie since the first time I saw it, circa 1979, when I vaguely recall it airing on network television; I think it might have been on NBC.

The Lone Pine screening was a wonderful evening, beginning with the movie being introduced by costars Patrick Wayne and Chris Mitchum.

Here's Patrick Wayne chatting with the audience before the formal interview with moderator Rob Word began:

It was challenging to get good photos of the interview due to a combination of our angle and the bright "TV" lights. Rob recorded the interview, and I believe it will appear on YouTube eventually. In the meantime, check out this 2018 interview Rob did with Chris on BIG JAKE.

Chris and Pat sat on the left, with Rob on the right. (That's "cowboy poet" Larry Maurice in the shadows talking to the audience in the above photo.) I was quite struck at times by how much Chris's profile resembled his late father.

It was fun to hear these two decades-long friends chatting before we watched the movie. Chris had previously appeared in Wayne's CHISUM (1970) and RIO LOBO (1970), and he recalled learning about BIG JAKE when John Wayne told him "You're going to play my son in my next movie!"

They talked a little about how well Wayne and Maureen O'Hara worked together, the directing collaboration of George Sherman and John Wayne, and they also joked about how much Wayne enjoyed throwing Patrick in the mud.

I had only vague memories of BIG JAKE, so seeing it at Lone Pine was pretty much a "new" viewing experience for me, and I enjoyed it quite well.

For those who aren't familiar with it, the film is set in the early 1900s. Richard Boone plays John Fain, who leads a deadly gang in a raid on an isolated ranch owned by Martha McCandles (Maureen O'Hara). Several employees are killed, her son Jeff (Bobby Vinton) is badly shot up, and Jeff's young son Little Jake (Ethan Wayne) is kidnapped for a million-dollar ransom.

Martha is a tough, canny woman who doesn't believe the Texas Rangers or the army are capable of handling the situation. She says it's "going to be a very harsh and unpleasant kind of business and will, I think, require an extremely harsh and unpleasant kind of man to see to it." Cut to a closeup of John Wayne as Martha's long-estranged husband, Jacob "Jake" McCandles.

Jake answers Martha's letter and quickly arrives at the ranch, where he takes charge of the ransom money and meets sons James (Patrick Wayne) and Michael (Christopher Mitchum) for the first time in years. James resents his father's long absence, derisively calling him "Daddy," while Michael is curious to get to know Jake.

The Rangers with their new-fangled cars attempt to help but are soon out of the picture and it's left to the McCandles men, Jake's old Indian friend Sam (Bruce Cabot), and Jake's loyal dog (called Dog!) who venture into Mexico on horseback to rescue Little Jake. The film is as much the story of a family reuniting as it is an action film about a carefully planned, daring rescue.

There are some definite oddities to BIG JAKE, which at times feels like a weird cross of tough '70s violence with a "Disneyfied" family film, including bright Disney-esque cinematography and the presence of Disney's THE PARENT TRAP star, O'Hara.

The movie was written by Harry and Rita Fink, who cowrote DIRTY HARRY (1971) the same year, but while several people are violently killed, at the same time it's treated in a rather offhanded way. Martha seems relatively unruffled by the deaths of longtime employees, and she calmly orders Jeff not to die.

Even stranger, there are two very significant deaths at movie's end which are never mentioned before everyone agrees to head home. The film knows when to quit, at 110 minutes, but the ending is way too abrupt given what the audience has invested in those characters. They deserved better.

I'd also add the movie is rather vague as far as omitting any mention of Little Jake's mother; based on his fancy wardrobe, his grandmother is clearly playing a key role in raising him.

The movie's many pleasures exceed the odd bits, though, starting with Wayne and Boone, who are at the absolute top of their games. Boone as the leader of the kidnapping gang is about as scary as in THE TALL T (1957), and his interplay with Wayne is fantastic, building to the perfect use of the movie's repeated joke "I thought you were dead." "Not hardly!" Wayne is, quite simply, bigger than life in this, a giant of the screen.

This was the last of the 11 films Wayne and Cabot made together, and it's really special. Cabot, who died shortly after the film was released, has a large, significant role, and again, watching his chemistry with Wayne is pure pleasure.

Wayne and O'Hara have very little time onscreen together, but their past history in four other films gives their interplay considerably more poignance than it otherwise would have had. Despite limited screen time O'Hara deftly sketches out a strong character who, among other things, doesn't hesitate to step between her wounded son and a gun-wielding killer.

Patrick Wayne and Chris Mitchum do well as two different "types," with Patrick the mustachioed, macho older brother and Chris the more curious and sensitive of the two. While Jake initially finds Mitchum's motorcycle-riding character a little too citified, he's delighted to discover his son is a skilled sharpshooter, which will come in handy during their quest.

The film features many great faces in roles of varying sizes, some of whom had worked with Wayne multiple times over the years: Harry Carey Jr. (seen here), John Agar, Hank Worden, John Doucette, Jim Davis, Glenn Corbett, and Gregg Palmer. A Western fan can't help but smile as one by one they show up on screen.

The movie was made by some of the best, including Wayne's longtime cinematographer, William Clothier; Clothier made just one more film after this, Wayne's THE TRAIN ROBBERS (1973), and then retired. The score was by Elmer Bernstein.

BIG JAKE is available on DVD and Blu-ray.

Tweet