FAMILY TIES: Sam Peckinpah's JUNIOR BONNER (dir by Sam Peckinpah, w/ Steve McQueen, Ida Lupino, Robert Preston, Joe Don Baker, 100 mns, ABC Company, USA, 1972)

Sam Peckinpah has a soft and familial side. And it's on full display in this 1972 modern cowboy movie as a family reunites in Prescott, Arizona during a rodeo.

It always seems to be the case that some of the directors of our most violent movies turn out to long or yearn for a kind of familial peace. Just as our funniest comedians often suffer from deep depression. Or our darkest moviemakers turn out to be some of our biggest optimists.

The Yin Yang. The cosmic balance.

What's so funny about watching JUNIOR BONNER is watching how unabashed Peckinpah is in wanting to make an entire movie about reconciliation, forgiveness, personal drive, family, and the modern west.

Ida Lupino is his Ma’. McQueen is her son and his own man. And this Sam Peckinpah movie about a family reuniting around a rodeo is about as sweet as they come.

McQueen's titular Junior Bonner gets the stuffing kicked out of him by a mean old bull in the opening scene of the movie. Peckinpah's trademark rat a tat tat cross cutting editing juxtopposed with slow motion is on hyperdrive in this movie. And oddly it works. 

Bonner, probably on the wrong side of the hill of being a rodeo star, heads to the next rodeo. . .which happens to be in his hometown of Prescott, Arizona.

He checks in on his fiery mom(a wonderful Ida Lupino), his womanizing rogue of a dad (an always commanding Robert Preston), his pragmatic envious but successful younger brother (Joe Don Baker). 

There's a lot of bad blood and tension in this family. But there's still a lot of love too.

McQueen is one of those Hollywood mysteries. He absolutely owns the screen and yet it often looks like he's doing nothing at all. But here, he plays Bonner with a kind of hangdog integrity and go-for-broke determination that wins you over. 

Star wattage.

If it's possible, Peckinpah has basically made a hang out movie here. 

Instead of bullet ballets, slow motion geysers and squibs of blood, that weird cuckolding fetish he always puts on display in most of his movies, he hangs it up to make a sweet, honest, observant look at a family of cowboys who don't quite realize the west as they know it has been replaced by mobile homes, car dealerships, and fast food restaurants.

These folks walk their paths and just as stubbornly let other folks walk theirs.

The movie wins you over. It's a few days around a rodeo. And yet, there is a tension: Junior is determined to ride the same bull that threw him at the beginning. And he's determined to hang on for 8 seconds.

Like father? Like Son?

Is it gonna be redemption or deeper humiliation? Is the family gonna hold or tear apart? 

Who knew that the director of STRAW DOGS could turn around and make a story about a family learning to love each other without trying to change each other? And win us over and warm our hearts.

Craig Hammill is the founder.programmer of Secret Movie Club