Junior Bonner is director Sam Peckinpah's lovely, elegiac look at the world of the rodeo--and his only film with nary a bullet wound. Steve McQueen, engagingly easygoing but determined, is the title character, a rodeo rider out to win a big bull-riding contest in his hometown. Even as he confronts his dwindling days on the circuit, he also must deal with his feuding parents, marvelously played by Robert Preston and Ida Lupino. Preston is particularly good as the randy old con artist; he and Lupino strike real sparks. Peckinpah's slow-motion camera is put to particularly good use filming the balletic violence of the rodeo, at once more terrifying and awe-inspiring than any gun battle. A lovely country-western valentine to a dying breed. --Marshall Fine
(15 votes)
2.
Western Legends
From the director of The Wild Bunch comes this "totally captivating" (Leonard Maltin) drama starring Steve McQueen as a seasoned rodeo cowboy who returns home to reconcile with his estranged family.
(15 votes)
3.
Still recovering after his throw from a bull named Sunshine, Junior Bonner, a drifting rodeo star, is on his way to Prescott, Arizona to join his family for the Frontier Days Celebration. When he arrives, however, he finds his house abandoned and learns that his father, Ace, is hospitalized. Despite medical orders, Ace joins the rest of his family at the Frontier Days Parade and rodeo festivities to watch Junior challenge Sunshine once again. But this time, Bonner is determined to beat the bull so that his father's dream of building a ranch in Australia can become a reality.
(15 votes)
4.
One of director Sam Peckinpah's lesser-known and little-seen outings, Junior Bonner is actually one of his most interesting for being so relaxed. Yet it deals with the themes that always interested him: the man who has watched the world pass him by and realises that his time is gone. In this case, it's rodeo rider Junior Bonner (Steve McQueen), who returns home to try to win top prize in the bull-riding competition to raise money to stake his father (Robert Preston) to a future. As easy-going and good-natured as you'd like, with a delicious chemistry between Preston and a feisty Ida Lupino as Junior's estranged parents, who are still able to strike romantic sparks. Great rodeo footage captures both the violence and beauty of the sport. --Marshall Fine, Amazon.com
(15 votes)
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