Reeling Backward: "Bite the Bullet" (1975)

I retain many disconnected images of cinema I saw in my youth, like jigsaw puzzle pieces scattered far afield of the set. Usually, they don't ever get fitted back together again with their movie.

One of the most vivid is of an exhausted cowboy climbing off his lathered horse right before the finish line of a grueling race, pausing to give the poor animal a drink of water from his canteen before taking one himself. I had no idea of its provenance, until I recognized it from "Bite the Bullet," a largely unremembered 1975 Western written and directed by Richard Brooks.

Letting the horse drink before he does is simply the way of Sam Clayton, a former Roughrider and ranch hand who joins the 700-mile race at the last minute, seemingly on a whim. He takes his time dawdling through most of the contest, usually near the back of the pack. After awhile we get the sense he's only there to watch over the horses, and to a far lesser extent the people riding them.

Sam is introduced by another pivotal character as a "defender of dumb animals, damsels in distress, champion of lost causes." He expresses his true feelings about the race just before the jump-off:

"Mister, did you ever see a horse run himself to death just to please the man on his back? What's the horse get out of it? Cracked bones? Colic? See his picture in the paper? Horse doesn't give a damn who wins a race. Me neither," Sam snorts.

Played inimitably by Gene Hackman, Sam reminded me in a lot of ways of Tom Smith, the horse trainer so memorably portrayed by Chris Cooper in "Seabiscuit." Both are very much disciples of the range, at home among hard men and hard living, yet standing apart from them in many ways -- not the least of which being their genuine compassion for the animals who serve them.

(Though Smith does obviously care about winning races.)

Sam is entirely capable of cruelty, returning abuse when he sees it visited upon horses by humans. In the opening scene he is appalled to find an abandoned glue wagon with several horses left for dead, including a pair that have been trussed up as bait for vultures. After setting free a still-living horse and rescuing a new foal, he is choked up by a mare that has essentially been crucified, its body held down and pierced by thick wire.

The look in Sam's eye leaves us certain that if the men who committed this atrocity were at hand, murders would be in the making.

Later, Sam encounters a stupid young cowpuncher, Carbo (Jan-Michael Vincent), attempting to knock out a jackass with one blow. Sam gives the boy the exact same treatment with his own fist, leading to a running feud that culminates with Sam whipping Carbo as punishment for riding his horse to death.

He makes the kid bury the beast, using his bare hands to sift the desert sand over the carcass -- an almost religious ritual in which the boy must tend to the flesh he has abused.

In a typical movie narrative, the punk cowboy would become the villain of the piece. Instead, the stern hand of Sam actually leads to Carbo's rehabilitation. His bravado finally falling, he admits to Miss Jones, the sole female contestant played by Candice Bergen, that despite the fancy pistol rig he wears he's never been in a gunfight, or even worked as a cowboy.

When Sam experiences that glorious moment at the end, the shared slaking of thirst by man and horse, it's Carbo's face the camera cuts to, teary-eyed. He witnesses this tender example of a symbiotic relationship between partners, not servant and served, and is overcome.

We sense the youngster will go on in life, a fake cowboy who turns into a real one, and take up Sam's mantle as a true defender of the West.

The race may sound like Hollywood hooey, but it's based on an actual events. In this telling set in 1908, the contest is sponsored and promoted by the "Western Press," mostly as a vanity project for magnate J.B. Parker (Paul Stewart) on behalf of his champion horse. He and his pompous son, Jack Parker (Dabney Coleman), ride around in a luxury train along the race route, applying cajoling and pressure as needed.

Sam worked for the Parkers, and his job was to bring their horse to meet the train gathering the contestants for the race. But he screwed up by stopping to help the glue horses and missed the train, and finds himself fired.

It's a little unclear if Sam was intended to ride the Parkers' horse in the race or merely fetch him, but either way he's out of a job. We would expect the fellow who does ride the rich man's horse to be a boastful fool, but he actually describes his opponents with great respect and delivers a cagey analysis of their abilities. They include:

• Miss Jones -- A prostitute turned rider, whose exact motives remain somewhat of a mystery until the end. Interestingly, although the reporter covering the race and many observers regard her participation as a stunt, the other racers treat her like one of their own. She's not the best rider but probably has the strongest horse, if only she would ever let it go full-out.
• Luke Matthews -- A fellow Roughrider, friend of Sam's, gambler and con man played by James Coburn, Luke has laid all his fortune on the line with a private bet against the Parkers. He's dismayed when Sam throws in right before the start, because that means only one of them can win. And he's not above trying to bribe his friend to throw the race. Luke is a smart rider, takes lots of chances and is lucky.
• Sir Harry Norfolk -- A British gamesman played by Ian Bannen, Norfolk has traveled the globe for the sake of sport. He relishes competition for its own sake, and his steed is the fastest in the open field. Unfortunately for him, the race course is mostly mountains, gulches, steep ravines and scorching deserts.
• Carbo -- He's got hay for brains, but his mustang is a tough beast and Carbo is willing to flay him alive to keep him moving.
• Mister -- We never even learn the old-timer's name, played by Ben Johnson. He's got a stiff back and a "bad pump," to use his own words, and by his own appraisal is 30 years past his prime. But after a lifetime of making any kind of living he can on the back of a horse, he dreams of winning the race and finally becoming a "top man... a man to remember."
• Mexican -- We never get a name for him either, played by Mario Arteaga. But that's perhaps appropriate as he's dismissed as "the Mexican" by the largely Caucasian cast of characters. Plagued by a bad tooth, he actually provides the film's title, when a bit of ad-hoc dentistry results in him using a bullet casing as a crown. He's possibly the best natural horsemen of the bunch.
• Sam -- What he lacks in horse, he more than makes up for in experience and patience. Parker's man calls him "the sleeper," the one racer he's truly worried about.

"Bite the Bullet" is a character piece that's not really driven by story. Indeed, beyond the framework of the race, there really isn't much of a narrative at all. The riders start out as individual competitors and gradually find out more about each other, eventually coming together in a bond of their own small, shared little community.

Sam sets the tone by repeatedly stopping to assist other racers, and soon it becomes infectious. Luke helps Norfolk when he tumbles down a ravine, and Miss Jones attends to Mexican with almost maternal sympathy. As mentioned, even the mercenary Carbo softens in the end.

Richard Brooks is a giant of midcentury cinema who doesn't have nearly the reputation he deserves. Often writing his own screenplays as well, his credits include "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," "In Cold Blood," "The Professionals," "The Last Time I Saw Paris," "Blackboard Jungle," "Lord Jim" and "Sweet Bird of Youth." He was nominated for the Academy Award six times, and won once for "Elmer Gantry."

I think what I most appreciated about "Bite the Bullet" was the sheer atypicalness of it. The movie never moves in a conventional direction. I would call it a neo-Western or revisionist one, which harkens back to the pillars of the genre while also questioning and undermining them.

Sam Clayton is tough, ornery loner, but his value system is decidedly askew from that of the Saint Johns of the Western, Wayne and Ford. At one point Sam actually declares himself un-American, casting competition and the desire to be the first or the best or the richest as unworthy endeavors.

The dialogue is whip-smart and memorable, with so many great throwaway jokes and asides. Other notable characters include Rosie (Jean Willes), the world-wise madam who brings her operation along with the race, happily inflating prices. Sally Kirkland plays Honey, her main whore. Walter Scott plays Steve, Miss Jones' husband, estranged by circumstances that will become important. Robert Donner plays the reporter who acts as the audience's stand-in, questioning and chronicling.

For a movie that depicts its main event as pointless and cruel, "Bite the Bullet" is a surprisingly effective film that is much more than the sum of its dust-coated parts.

Reeling Backward: "One-Eyed Jacks" (1961)

I didn't think I'd like "One-Eyed Jacks." It was directed by Marlon Brando at the precipice of his acting career, right before he slid off into a decade-long fallow period revived only by "The Godfather" in 1972. He had never directed before, and never stepped behind the camera again. Usually, that sort of thing happens for a good reason.

All in all, it has the ingredients of an overstuffed vanity project, a la Kevin Costner's "The Postman."

Early on, the film's languid pace (2 hours and 20 minutes) and Brando's mush-mouthed delivery of lines seemed to confirm my suspicions. But soon the film won me over with its curious mix of Western mythology, revenge story and romance.

It's perhaps the actor's most distilled expression of his persona as a performer, a moody wash of resentment and pride. His gunslinger Rio is the apotheosis of Brando's young rebel roles, now grown a little older and more cautious. He's not always quite sure what he wants or what the right thing to do is, but whatever path he chooses Rio commits to with all-consuming passion.

In his late 30s, Brando was no longer the smoldering screen presence of the 1950s. His torso had started to thicken, his jawline soften, and if his hairline wasn't yet fleeing back across his head, it was at least looking for the exits.

Set in the dusty foothills of Baja California and then moving to the idyllic seaside town of Monterey, "One-Eyed Jacks" is about a friendship gone bad.

Rio and Dad Longworth (Karl Malden) are longtime roustabouts robbing banks and having a good time. Dad is considerably older, a veteran bandit who picked up Rio when he was a kid and taught him the ropes. Even though he's far surpassed him as a gunman, Rio still looks up to Dad, who's starting to lose a step.

In Brando's close-mouthed, Southern-fried vernacular, "Dad" comes out sounding like "Ndahd." The same can be said for the rest of Rio's speech, which Brando delivers like he's chewing over every syllable and reluctant to spit it out.

A heist goes bad, the lawmen have them pinned on a mountain peak with only one spent horse and a rifle between them, and Rio suggests one of them hightail it down to a little ranch they know about nearby, pick up a pair of fresh horses and save the day. They opt to leave it to chance to see who rides off with the gold while the other waits.

Rio suggests Dad pick which of his hands is holding the bullet, but rigs it by pulling a cartridge from his gun belt so Dad will be the one to ride. Why? Perhaps he figures the older, slower Dad deserves a break. Maybe Rio figures that Dad, lacking a hat or shoes from their hasty getaway, won't last in the broiling heat. Or maybe he just loves Dad and trusts him.

In any case, Dad gets a fresh horse and then flees with the gold, leaving Rio to be captured by the Federales. Before he's taken in, the posse stops by the ranch where Rio learns of Dad's betrayal.

Flash five years later. After busting out of the Sonora prison with a Mexican pal (Larry Duran), Rio begins searching for Dad to exact his revenge. Along the way he throws in with Bob Armory (Ben Johnson), a quietly malevolent sort who wants to knock over the fat bank in Monterey.

Turns out that's where Dad has gone to ground, reforming his ways and even being elected sheriff. He's also married a widow named Maria (Katy Jurado) with a teen daughter, Louisa.

She's played by Mexican actress Pina Pellicer, who had a short but memorable career kicked off by her performance in "One-Eyed Jacks." With her thin, sallow face and languid eyes, Pellicer had a dark, unconventional beauty for her era. She also managed to instill more depth and emotion in the dialogue than screenwriters Calder Willingham and Guy Trosper did. Sadly, she committed suicide three years later.

The genesis of the screenplay is a little fuzzy, with Willingham, Trosper, Stanley Kubrick and Brando himself all contributing drafts at various points. It's a very, very loose adaptation of the novel "The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones" by Charles Neider.

It's at this point that the plot goes kind of sideways, but things get really interesting. Rio, Bob and their crew ride into town, but Rio peels off for a visit at Dad's place. Dad lies to him about the circumstances of his betrayal, and introduces him to his family, with an immediate spark between Rio and Louisa.

Now, this sounds like an exceptionally lousy way to go about robbing a bank. But Rio is less concerned about getting rich than getting even -- or, at the very least, getting satisfaction for being treated so shabbily by his best friend.

After a huge carnival party, which Rio uses as a cover to seduce Louisa and deflower her as a way to get back at Dad, the gunman realizes he doesn't really know what the wants. At various points Rio means to kill Dad, or run off with Louisa, but things don't quite work out.

After Rio kills a drunk in a fair fight, Dad uses the incident as an excuse to take revenge for Louisa. He beats Rio to a pulp, flays his back to shreds with a whip, and pulverizes his gun  hand with the butt of a rifle. Rio spends a couple months at a nearby fishing village healing up, with Bob and his partner growing increasingly frustrated. They signed on for a rich bank scheme, not a Shakespearean revenge drama.

Bob finally robs the bank without Rio, shooting a girl bystander and getting killed himself in the process, but Dad uses it as an excuse to hang Rio and rid himself of his troubles. Malden's steely, internal performance suggests that Dad doesn't really hate Rio, but he despises that his presence reminds Dad of his own failings.

Rio, for his own part, is incensed that Dad has managed to turn his life around as easily as flipping over a poker card. "You're a one-eyed jack around here, Dad. I seen the other side of your face," he accuses.

Also notable is Slim Pickens as Dad's jackal of a deputy, Lon, who has designs on Louisa. Pickens usually played bumbling, cartoonish characters, but he's chilling here.

Like other novice directors, Brando made the wise choice to hire a veteran cinematographer, Charles Lang, to handle the visual look of the picture. The result, nominated for an Oscar, has a scuffed-up kind of a beauty, vivid colors mixed with off-putting close-ups.

The most interesting thing to me about "One-Eyed Jacks" is that it relies more on the power of inference than overt depictions to demonstrate the internal workings of its characters, especially Rio and Dad. Rio is such a deviation from the classic Western protagonist, in that he's a man of action who often isn't sure how to act.

Six-shooter characters, even when they aren't supposed to be heroic, are often defined by their single-minded pursuit of a goal -- think John Wayne in "The Searchers." Rio is more akin to Brando's urban characters of the '50s, torn apart by misdirected passion and existential angst.

3.5 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "The Sugarland Express" (1974)

In 1974 Steven Spielberg was a nobody and Goldie Hawn was a bonafide star stuck in a rut of ditzy blonde roles. They tag-teamed to launch the career of arguably the most successful -- depending on how you want to define it -- director over the last 40 years.

Coppola had a heyday that few will ever match, and Scorsese has made a handful of films that will stand the test of time as cinematic watersheds. But nobody in the modern era has been as prolific and as consistently good as Spielberg.

I cannot name a single Spielberg picture I do not like. Even stuff that many people disparage, like "Hook" and "1941," I can find something to like about them enough to recommend. At his worst -- say, "The Terminal" -- he's left me merely indifferent. My favorite, incidentally, is the one most people have never heard of: 1987's "Empire of the Sun."

With "The Sugarland Express," I can now say I've seen all 24 of his feature film directorial efforts (not including movie sequences, TV shows, etc.). His first effort at the age of 28, one year before "Jaws" would change the map of Hollywood forever, is a sweet cross-country caper with a tragic undertow.

It's not terribly original -- "Bonnie and Clyde," "Badlands" and "The Getaway" are indelibly marked in its DNA -- but shows an already dazzling young filmmaker honing his skills and vision. Spielberg came up with the story, based on a real-life event in 1969, along with screenwriters Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins.

Hawn plays Lou Jean Poplin, a 25-year-old who busts her husband out of jail so they can go rescue their baby boy, who's been handed off to foster care. As they drive around creation in a Texas Highway Patrol car, with the patrolman held hostage, they become instant folks heroes for breaking the law to keep their family together.

A few caveats, though. Lou Jean lost custody of their boy because was in jail herself on petty larceny counts. And hubby Clovis (William Atherton, forever "dickless" from "Ghostbusters") is actually held in a Pre-Release Center -- in other words, he's been selected for parole and is in a barely incarcerated state before getting out in four months.

But Lou Jean insists that Clovis bust out right now, even though there's no reason to believe the baby is going anywhere soon. She wears some of Clovis' clothes on top of her own, they switch out in the men's restroom, and they walk right out the gate. The guards aren't lax -- it's just that breaking out of pre-release is like throwing a race right before you cross the finish line.

They catch a ride with some old folks, who drive so slow on the highway they're pulled over by Patrolman Maxwell Slide, an eager young officer. After a chase and crash, Lou Jean lifts Slide's gun while he's carrying her out of the wrecked car, and soon the long chase is on.

Slide is played by Michael Sacks, who had a short but busy acting career in film and television. Two years earlier, he starred as Billy Pilgrim in "Slaughterhouse-Five," and he was also in "The Amityville Horror" and "Hanover Street" with Harrison Ford, but by 1984 he was out of showbiz. He runs an online bond trading company now.

Slide is a quasi-willing victim, not making much of an attempt to wrest the single pistol and shotgun (both his) away from Clovis and Lou Jean, who are less than vigilant in keeping the cop covered. When the bandits become famous, drawing television crews and other media coverage, Slide gawks joyously at his picture in the newspaper, and even passes out kisses through the car window as they travel through a town of adoring fans.

The dynamic between Lou Jean and Clovis is interesting, and not entirely healthy. It's pretty clear that Clovis, while canny, is nowhere near his wife's match when it comes to getting what she wants. Lou Jean pushes Clovis' every button to get him to escape from prison, hold a gun on Slide, and pretty much every other nefarious activity. Of course, the police view him as the instigator and give deference to Lou Jean when it comes time to get rough.

In real life, Lou Jean -- all the characters' names were changed for the film -- served only five months in jail after they were captured, and eventually got her baby back through due process with the authorities. Clovis, if he really was her happy dupe, paid for it with his life.

The other main character is Captain Harlin Tanner, played by the great Ben Johnson. After a career of playing sidekicks and villainous cowpokes, Johnson won an Oscar for 1971's "The Last Picture Show" and suddenly found himself getting meatier roles. He plays Tanner as a tough old veteran who cherishes his role as a law enforcement officer, but also values human life and is reluctant to trade it away without exhausting every option.

At a time in history when the general public was tiring of youthful rebellion and ready for the cops to crack some skulls, Tanner is something of a gentle relic -- or a groundbreaking pioneer, depending on how you look at it.

"I've spent 18 years on the force without having to take a human life, and I'd just as soon keep it that way," he says.

Tanner calls in a pair of Texas Ranger snipers to take out the culprits, but calls them off when they tell him they only have 90 percent chance of success without hitting his officer. "Those are good numbers," his right-hand man insists, but Tanner is willing to gamble that he can talk Clovis down via the CB radio.

In one memorable bit, Tanner calls in a port-a-john to be brought into an empty field so Lou Jean can tend to her business. Of course, he plants an officer inside in an attempt to put an end to things. Clovis figures it out and puts an end to the attempted capture without violence, but doesn't bear any grudge against Tanner for trying.

It's telling that Tanner and Clovis reach a sort of understanding where the hunter and hunted respect each other's role while erecting certain lines of decency neither will cross.

Spielberg strikes a tone of fun-and-games, with clear portents indicating things will end badly. He plays with the audience's expectations -- at one point Clovis, who had been riding in the passenger seat, takes the wheel and wears Slide's hat and sunglasses. As they draw closer to the trapped house filled with marksmen, we expect the gunmen will shoot the patrolman by mistake. But no -- the sunglasses and hat disappear, taken by some roadside fans as souvenirs, and the tension eases.

John Williams provided the mournful score, as he has for all 24 Spielberg features -- an unprecedented collaboration between composer and director.

"The Sugarland Express" is a derivative film, but still an enjoyable one. Goldie Hawn proved she could handle grittier roles, and the movie was successful enough for Spielberg to get a greenlight for "Jaws." That was a disastrous shoot, but as is usually the case for the gifted filmmaker, he turned chum into screen gold.

3 stars out of four