Clint Eastwood tried to get mellow--and/or funny--with a series of films in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Bronco Billy works better than most (certainly better than those monkey movies he made), though it's far from perfect. Still, there's something charming about Eastwood as a cowboy wannabe who runs his own version of a Wild West show in modern times. The show is ragged and his sharp-shooting skills are suspect, but he's having fun. At least until a runaway heiress (Sondra Locke) joins his second-rate band of buddies and proves to be both a divisive and jeopardizing force and who ultimately forces Eastwood to admit to his New Jersey roots. Eastwood is nice in a relaxed mood, but one wonders (as he must at this point) what he saw in Locke. --Marshall Fine
(43 votes)
2.
"Eastwood's warmest and most memorable character." -Janet Maslin, THE NEW YORK TIMES
Ask Clint Eastwood to select personal favorites among his movies and you might be surprised by one choice. "It's an old-fashioned theme," Eastwood says. "But if, as a film director, I ever wanted to say something, you'll find it in Bronco Billy".
"One of the funniest and most touching films you'll see this or any year" (Rona Barrett, ABC-TV) casts him as the ace sharpshooter and head of a modern Wild West tent show. Life's been hard for Billy and his ragtag troupe. But their luck might change -- in the unlikely person of a highfalutin society dame (Sondra Locke). You may already have a favorite Eastwood role. Watch Bronco Billy and chances are you'll have another.
(46 votes)
3.
Clint Eastwood's BRONCO BILLY is a funny and poignant depiction of one man's quixotic devotion to the code of the Old West and traditional American values. Billy (Eastwood) leads his ragtag crew of performers as they travel the countryside, putting on their bare bones Wild West show for sparse crowds. Billy's not an easy man to work for, and he and his bunch barely make a living, but they are pursuing their dreams. When Antoinette Lily (Sondra Locke, in a somewhat shrill performance), a snooty heiress abandoned by her husband, joins the group, their luck seems to run out, and Billy has to find a way to keep them together. As in THE OUTLAW JOSIE WALES, Eastwood plays the patriarch of an ethnically diverse makeshift family. It would be easy to dismiss Billy, to laugh at his corny devotion to outmoded values and old-fashioned entertainment. Like Eastwood himself, Billy's not even a real cowboy. But, gradually, the audience comes to admire him for his fierce devotion to his crew and his insistence on showing the "li'l pards" in his audience not just a good time but also a dream of striving to live life as who they want to be.
(45 votes)
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