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The Cowboy Way
A pair of engaging performances from the leads help to make 1994's The Cowboy Way, an action comedy mixed with a fish out of water story, worth a look.
Sonny (Keifer Sutherland) and Pepper (Woody Harrelson) are a pair of rodeo cowboys from New Mexico who have been friends since they were kids, but had a falling out a year ago when Pepper didn't show up for an important rodeo. They learn that a good friend of theirs named Nacho Salazar who has gone to New York to find his daughter, Theresa. Theresa has found herself part of a white slavery ring and Nacho has turned up missing. Sonny and Pepper temporarily decide to put their differences aside to find out what happened to Nacho.
William D. Witliff's screenplay is a humorous take on a not unfamiliar theme already explored in films like Midnight Cowboy where country and city sensibilities clash in an attempt to co-exist or fight a common enemy. Love when Pepper and Sonny arrive in the city and decide to pick, of all places, the Waldorf Astoria, to have dinner. Pepper's reply to the waiter's query as to how he would like his steak prepared couldn't possibly be repeated, but
Director Gregg Champion (Short Circuit, Stakeout) gives the story a nice pacing while providing detailed focus to the action. The care he puts into the photography of the rodeo scenes at the beginning of the film are a perfect counterpart to the one-of-a-kind finale which finds our heroes chasing a subway train on horseback. Champion's direction must also be credited for clearly establishing the friendship between Sonny and Pepper, which is rock solid, but also fraught with tension, a tension that keeps the viewer wondering if these two can keep it together long enough to get the bad guys.
Harrelson and Sutherland are terrific together and are really what makes this movie worth watching, though I have to admit that Dylan McDermott made a smooth and slick bad guy. The supporting cast is peppered with familiar faces like Ernie Hudson, Luis Guzman, Marg Helgenberger, Matthew Cowles, and if you don't blink you'll catch Oscar winner Allison Janney in a tiny role. It's a little schmaltzy and predictable, but it does put the viewer behind the heroes back and behind "the cowboy way."
A pair of engaging performances from the leads help to make 1994's The Cowboy Way, an action comedy mixed with a fish out of water story, worth a look.
Sonny (Keifer Sutherland) and Pepper (Woody Harrelson) are a pair of rodeo cowboys from New Mexico who have been friends since they were kids, but had a falling out a year ago when Pepper didn't show up for an important rodeo. They learn that a good friend of theirs named Nacho Salazar who has gone to New York to find his daughter, Theresa. Theresa has found herself part of a white slavery ring and Nacho has turned up missing. Sonny and Pepper temporarily decide to put their differences aside to find out what happened to Nacho.
William D. Witliff's screenplay is a humorous take on a not unfamiliar theme already explored in films like Midnight Cowboy where country and city sensibilities clash in an attempt to co-exist or fight a common enemy. Love when Pepper and Sonny arrive in the city and decide to pick, of all places, the Waldorf Astoria, to have dinner. Pepper's reply to the waiter's query as to how he would like his steak prepared couldn't possibly be repeated, but
Director Gregg Champion (Short Circuit, Stakeout) gives the story a nice pacing while providing detailed focus to the action. The care he puts into the photography of the rodeo scenes at the beginning of the film are a perfect counterpart to the one-of-a-kind finale which finds our heroes chasing a subway train on horseback. Champion's direction must also be credited for clearly establishing the friendship between Sonny and Pepper, which is rock solid, but also fraught with tension, a tension that keeps the viewer wondering if these two can keep it together long enough to get the bad guys.
Harrelson and Sutherland are terrific together and are really what makes this movie worth watching, though I have to admit that Dylan McDermott made a smooth and slick bad guy. The supporting cast is peppered with familiar faces like Ernie Hudson, Luis Guzman, Marg Helgenberger, Matthew Cowles, and if you don't blink you'll catch Oscar winner Allison Janney in a tiny role. It's a little schmaltzy and predictable, but it does put the viewer behind the heroes back and behind "the cowboy way."