The Big Country (1958)
I don't know who thought it would be a good idea to feature a picture of Gregory Peck lazily leaning over a fence on the front of the DVD. This is, after all, an almost three hour long western that also stars Charlton Heston as the ranch foreman who is quite the arse hole. I don't know about you, but Gregory Peck isn't my president.
There were plenty of poses that Charlton's Steve Leech assumed throughout the film that could have been used to sell this movie. There was the one when he was giving Peck a dirty look for wearing a sissy-looking city hat instead of the more testosterone-filled cowboy hat that all real men in the Big Country wore along with their tan squint. There was the grimace of disgust that Chuck usually reserved for talking apes that didn't know their role that he affixed to Peck when Greg wussed out of a brawl in front of the entire ranch. Then there was the scene that had Heston standing around shirtless when Greg finally got around to challenging him to an prairie-spanning fight that was one of those main event-caliber deals that was fought at night with no one else around.
I guess they were just trying to get across the idea that Peck is playing a thinking man's cowboy, but truth be told, he's really just a city slicker from out east who likes to try and compare his adventures as captain of some tub and getting keelhauled at the equator with being teased by the Hannassey boys And by teased, I mean roped like some kind slow-witted cow and humiliated in front of his fiancee.
Peck is James McKay, which means that I had to suppress a snicker whenever someone started talking about Jim McKay buying that spread of land called the Big Muddy and getting hisself involved in a range war, since I kept expecting Jim McKay to start talking about the "thrill of victory" after getting the Big Muddy and bemoaning "the agony of defeat" after the Major (don't ask) and Burl Ives shoot each other during the big canyon showdown that brings the movie to its close.
McKay comes back to his fiancee's home where her daddy (the Major) has a big ranch and is embroiled in a age-old dispute with Rufus Hannassey, the patriarch to the white trash clan that has some land near the Major's ranch. Both Rufus and the Major need access to the water on the Big Muddy, a piece of land owned by Jean Simmons.
Since he was an outsider, Jim McKay didn't understand the backward ways of the people in the Big Country (about every ten minutes in this movie some local goober would reiterate to McKay that he was in the Big Country to the point that he and Jean Simmons actually joked about it later on). I'm guessing that this Big Country place was probably Texas and if so, it just proves the conventional wisdom that the rest of us regular states would gladly give Texas back to Mexico if they would only take it.
In the Big Country, you were only as tough as your reputation and when you were hanging out with old crusty guys named Major, Burl Ives, and a wild, untamable stallion called Thunder that would look down their nose at some fancy boy from the east that probably pees sitting down, the cut of your gib was measured by whether you got irked when Chuck Heston called you a liar. Generally, I'm opposed to a lot of backing down, shuffling your feet and begging off from a good old fashioned brawl. Course that's just my upbringing on the streets of Gary, Indiana. We didn't fight and scrap because it was the cool thing to do, but because someone had probably disrespected our moms or at the very least gotten into some of cousin Pookie's BBQ.
Peck, though makes a pretty convincing case for his pragmatism and also benefits from the fact that he beats ass when he wants and has the guts to stand there while someone shoots him in the head during a duel. There really ain't no substitute in the Big Country for being crazy brave. You see, when you boil it all down, this is a movie about some joker from the city outwitting the country rednecks at their own game. In the end, Peck gets the prized land, ditches the annoying (and not nearly as good looking as Jean Simmons) fiancee, and gets rid of the Major, Rufus, and Rufus' son (Chuck Connors). He even learns to ride Thunder!.
I'm going to go ahead and give this one the MonsterHunter Seal of Approval, chiefly due to the distinctly anti-Texan position it takes. To me and most marginally educated people, Texans are pretty much like the French. You see, both of these peoples (and I'm not one to generalize, but this applies to absolutely all of them) believe themselves to be superior to everyone else, despite there not only being a lack of evidence to back that up, but actually some quite compelling facts to dispel these falsely held beliefs all together. With the French, you have a very crabby and pungent population while the Texans dress and talk funny.
Now then, what I liked about Peck's character was that in spite of these hillbillies and their various attempts to co-opt him to their own ends, McKay just went ahead and did what he wanted on his own terms. I'm not real sure what this actually accomplished, like with the horse or battling Heston to a standstill without any one around, but he was able to lose his fiancee and scored lots of cool points with any guy watching when the fiancee came crawling back and he told her that it wasn't going to work out, but that he was staying and had bought the land her daddy had so desperately wanted. Oh well, at least you'll always have your dried up old daddy and thirsty cows to keep you warm at night!
Of course, with any three hour movie (especially any three hour western), this one has its share of problems. I'm still trying to figure out why when it was finally over, I was wishing that there had been more scenes with Heston, Simmons, and Peck. You would've thought with the excessive running time that we would have gotten our fill of the stars, but we didn't. I also found my interest fading whenever Rufus or the Major or someone started whining about whose cows were going to get whose water and I wondered why McKay just didn't ask Jean Simmons to move back east with him and let these country folks fight it out by themselves. What did McKay care about any of this? Still, it's easily a must see for one important reason: Heston is pure Heston! You'll have to pry The Big Country from my cold dead hands! You know, because it was so long, I died of old age watching it.