Saturday, May 7, 2011

1961 - THE COMMANCHEROS light weight very entertaining John Wayne western


This is a highly polished film.  It was assembled by professionals behind and in front of the camera.  The director was Michael Curtiz shooting his final film with uncredited assistance from the Duke himself. 


The cast is a who's who of old Hollywood pros starting with John Wayne, Stuart Whitman, Lee Marvin, Bruce Cabot, Edgar Buchannan and Nehemiah Perhoff.  Behind the camera is the 2nd unit director Cliff Lyons who had worked on Spartacus, Ben Hur and and How The West Was Won amongst others.  Elmer Bernstein composed the score and the rest of the technical credits are very high.


Nobody is ever going to confuse this film with Solaris, but this is an extremely entertaining western with The Duke in the film the way audiences liked him easy going and not taking himself too seriously.  The Commancheros has none of his right wing political bull crap.


This is the kind of film that people think of when they say "they don't make them like this anymore" although the reality was Hollywood could barely make them like this at all.

105 minutes.

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