Westerns are a major blind spot for me, so take this with a grain of salt... I thought Big Jake was just fine. Seeing as this came later in his career, it feels like it was probably the last good movie John Wayne made. It has the perfect premise for an actor who basically played himself all his life - the manly man. I liked the humor, found the acting to be okay, and was impressed by some of the stunt work. (Though the exaggeratedly red blood made me lol.) But this movie played it very safe - the bad guys were basically caricatures, of course the one native character that gets lines sacrifices himself for the white man, and I never once was really worried for the grandson. And I get what the intro was going for but I found it tedious. However, I was surprised how well-written it was - it did a solid job balancing it's two genres: action/adventure and comedy. This also makes me more interested in checking out John Wayne's other films (especially The Searchers) as well as try to fill in the gaps I have with Westerns.
Westerns are a major blind spot for me, so take this with a grain of salt... I thought Big Jake was just fine. Seeing as this came later in his career, it feels like it was probably the last good movie John Wayne made. It has the perfect premise for an actor who basically played himself all his life - the manly man. I liked the humor, found the acting to be okay, and was impressed by some of the stunt work. (Though the exaggeratedly red blood made me lol.) But this movie played it very safe - the bad guys were basically caricatures, of course the one native character that gets lines sacrifices himself for the white man, and I never once was really worried for the grandson. And I get what the intro was going for but I found it tedious. However, I was surprised how well-written it was - it did a solid job balancing it's two genres: action/adventure and comedy. This also makes me more interested in checking out John Wayne's other films (especially The Searchers) as well as try to fill in the gaps I have with Westerns.