Back In The Land Of The Dogs

Which means more old movies.

Even having watched their actual plan, and having seen the thought that went into it, I still think a better solution for stopping War Wagon's wagon full of gold would have been to blow up the bridge while the wagon was on it. The wagon goesup, but then it comes down - right into that gorge, where it'll be busted open, and no inside will survive to oppose the taking of the gold. Plus, the escort riders will probably be on the bridge as well, so that takes care of them, too. Yes, that's a lot of deaths, but John wayne's actual plan involved bribing some local Native Americans to attack, which got people killed, and they were going to have to kill the people inside the wagon, or else it wouldn't matter if they waited six months or six years to start spending the gold, because there'd be witnesses to their crime. They were simply fortunate, unscrupulous mining magnate Pierce killed his two employees for deciding to turn tail rather than face Tal Jackson and Lomax (John Wayne and Kirk Douglas), one of whom killed Pierce right back.

Actually, that little bit of employer-employee strife felt tacked on, as if the movie execs didn't want Wayne or Douglas to kill the guys for some reason. Admittedly, they'd already killed two guys who tried to kill them earlier, so I don't know why there'd be squeamishness now, but it seemed rather pointless and abrupt. I suppose the point could have been to demonstrate how Pierce's poor way of dealing with people was coming back to bite him. But consider Pierce mined the gold off land he took by paying Lomax to start a fight with Tal, then somehow manipulated things so Tal wound up in jail for 3 years, leaving Pierce free to take his ranch. I'd say being killed by Tal would have been a perfectly appropriate "what goes around, comes around".

My dad mentioned they had some trouble getting Douglas to appear in this movie, partially because he wouldn't really like having second billing (but it's John Wayne's Batjac production, so what would he expect?), and also because he really didn't like to do comedies. Dad's contention was that's too bad, as he thinks Douglas has good comedic timing. I suppose he does, though the movie really didn't feel that funny to me. There were funny parts, the bar fight was more silly than serious, but I wouldn't call it a funnymovie, not even to the extent of a Die Hard, let alone something like McClintock! Which is fine; it was a good movie, comedy or no, though I've enjoyed any number of other John Wayne movies more.

Watching Kirk Douglas get on his horse was practically worth it all by itself. He always mounts the horse in some flashy manner, but never the same way. My personal favorite was when his horse was next to another horse, and Douglas leapt over the other horse and landed perfectly in the saddle of his horse. If I tried that, I'd break my fool neck.