Smith! (1969)

This is not what I had in mind when I said I was tired of watching the same movie over and over again. In fact, this is the opposite of helpful. Sigh.

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With Walt gone, the studio reached a crossroads. It was clear that they had to do something to stay relevant, but what? Well, it’s around this point that they desperately started throwing stuff at the wall to see what stuck. The silly animal comedies sold well towards the end of Walt’s life, so they made approximately a thousand of those. Live action musicals were hip and trendy, so they tried their hand at those. And now, it seems like they remembered the Davy Crockett craze, and that means we’re back to the Old West. Oh joy. Oh happy day.

I say that with utmost sarcasm.

This film was based on an episode of the TV series Festival, which in turn was based on a book by Paul St. Pierre (not to be confused with the voice actor Paul St. Peter, a mistake I made at least twice) called Breaking Smith’s Quarter Horse. I didn’t watch the episode and I couldn’t find the book because frankly I saw a cowboy hat on the Wikipedia page and cried a little on the inside and that was it. The working title was A Man Named Smith, which would probably have made things significantly easier to research, but here we are with nothing more than the most common last name in the English language. Michael O’Herlihy’s past as a director (Fighting Prince of Donegal, Family Band) has been checkered, and Louis Pelletier’s past as a writer (Big Red, Those Calloways) has been mostly bad, so that’s not a great sign either.

By 1969, the Western genre had well and truly fallen out of fashion. These movies hadn’t really been successful since around Old Yeller, but like I said, the studio had to churn something out. Unfortunately for them, this film’s release date came almost immediately after the passing of Congress’s Indian Civil Rights Act, which ostensibly provided First Nations peoples the same legal protections that the Bill of Rights offered others. Unfortunately, it also gave federal courts power over tribal governments, further eroding the agency of indigenous Americans. So, that’s a thing. As a result of the bitter legal battle over this bill, not many people were interested in seeing a movie about how the legal system fails an indigenous man, so Smith! was a financial and critical bomb. It wasn’t even rereleased on Wonderful World of Color! And we were doing so well in The Love Bug.

Okay. Here we go.

STORY

Before the credits end, before even the thirty second mark, we already have several nasty caricatures of Native American people. That’s super reassuring. Seriously, I praised The Love Bug for taking steps forward and now we’re back here? Whyyy. Okay, after the worst credits sequence we’ve seen yet, we fade to the whitest kid on the planet, Alpie Smith, trying and failing to mount his Apaloosa pony. After it throws him, he hears a familiar whistle! It’s his dad! Or… I think he’s his dad. Alpie calls him Smith, same as anybody else, which makes things really confusing. All I know is Alpie calls Smith’s love interest Ma, so he’s probably his dad. Anyway, Smith’s been away for three days without a word, after promising Alpie that he’d get his friend Antoine’s help to break the pony so Alpie can ride. He’ll make good on that promise eventually, but first he has to face the wrath of his wife-girlfriend-type-person. Who also calls him Smith.

At first, Norah Smith gives her boyfriend-husband-type-person the cold shoulder, even when he tries to kiss her neck to warm her up. It probably doesn’t help that he’s got his nasty muddy feet all over her nice clean kitchen table. But her frozen demeanor is only partially because he just up and left for three days without a word to anyone. Antoine’s already here, sheltering in an abandoned shack on the Smiths’ property, and he’s got company– Gabriel Jimmyboy, a wanted murderer. Smith is willing to give them the benefit of the doubt because Antoine raised him, but Norah isn’t as trusting. It’s heavily implied that that’s more because they’re Native Americans than because of the accusations against Gabriel. By the way, the film never says which nation these characters belong to, so I apologize in advance for that.

Speak of the Devil and he will appear. Old Antoine comes for a visit, and at Alpie’s urging Smith ignores Norah’s apprehension and invites him for dinner. Smith’s all too happy to stall for time and let Alpie happily chatter about his pony, but Norah cuts to the chase. She wants to know who’s in that shack with Antoine. Now. But this movie is slow as molasses so Alpie’s best friend Peterpaul shows up to put the brakes on and also to let the adults talk without any prying young ears. Norah tries to push Antoine into confessing, but he just takes his hat and leaves after spouting a few lines of vaguely mystical mumbo jumbo.

Literally the second he’s gone, Norah makes fun of his broken English and it’s like we’re back to Peter Pan oh god why. This sparks an argument over whether or not Smith is justified in focusing all his money, resources, and attention on their Native American neighbors. On one hand, they’re poor as it is so they really don’t need all these extra mouhts to feed. On the other, “I’m so fed up with Indians” is a terrible line that we should not still be hearing in 1969. And on a third, Smith only does it because he feels that it’s his duty as the local Good White Person to stand up for them because this movie is so incredibly white saviory it’s kind of ridiculous. In the end, Norah wears him down and Smith promises to go out and get Gabriel Jimmyboy off their land.

If Smith is our white savior and Norah is our casual racist, we still need an overt racist. So on the way to the cabin, Smith runs into police officer Vince Hebert, who spouts gems like “he looks like a blasted Indian” and justifications for how he doesn’t need a warrant to go in and attack an accused killer if that killer happens to not be white. It’s gross, but at least he’s the bad guy, unlike some people. Smith basically tells him to get out of here and at least pretend to do things the legal way. Vince drives off fuming and Smith makes it to the cabin. Gabriel Jimmyboy himself snaps the door shut, pointing a rifle at him, which probably isn’t the best character introduction if you want us to believe he’s innocent. Old Antoine’s there, too, smiling serenely as if nothing’s wrong. And to him, it’s not. He has a plan: if Smith smuggles Jimmyboy out to Canada, he can get away from his problems scot-free. Yeah, no. Smith knows best so he insists on Smith staying here and standing trial. He’ll prove his innocence, with the help of a lawyer appointed by the Indian Bureau, who very definitely exists to act in the best interests of indigenous peoples. Naturally, Antoine and Jimmyboy have their doubts, but Antoine comes up with a compromise: if he turns in Jimmyboy, he can use the $500 reward to hire the best possible lawyer.

While Smith smokes a peace pipe with his friends and no I am not kidding, Norah starts to get kinda paranoid. Normally, I’m all about a lady riding out to her man’s rescue instead of the other way around, but this time she has no reason to assume he’s in danger other than the skin color of the company he’s keeping and that’s super gross. But she shows up at the door and Jimmyboy and Antoine are understandably a little tense because she’s pointing her husband’s gun at them. Smith does his best to diffuse the situation and, once his pure goodness has prevented anyone getting shot, heads off on the back of his wife’s horse. She berates him for his lack of concern over the wanted murderer, but he just knows Jimmyboy is innocent. Oh, and he has the audacity to compare being an incompetent cattle rancher to being a persecuted minority. This. Guy.

We’re starting to lose the kids in the audience, what with all these heavy themes of racism and incompetent policing. Let’s bring it back to Alpie, his Native American friend Peterpaul, and their adorable dog Charlie. The three of them embark on an adventure to the abandoned cabin, sure that the rumors of a murderer are just rumors and this is all just good fun. Still, when Charlie barks and gives away their position, the kids scramble back, sure they heard someone with a gun. They choose an abandoned copper mine as their next playground, not realizing that Jimmyboy has moved and taken up that very spot as his new hideout. And honestly, dude, pulling a gun on two kids is probably not the best way to prove your innocence. At least he lowers it when he realizes that Alpie is Smith’s son, because Smith is just such a beacon of goodness you guys. He explains that he and the murder victim fought over a gambling debt, but he didn’t mean to kill him, and that’s enough for Alpie. Since Antoine hasn’t yet brought Jimmyboy food, Alpie offers to help him out and bring supplies every day.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, the court-appointed interpreter for the local Native American Tribe, Walter Charlie, rides his bike up for a chat with Smith. He knows the reason Antoine hasn’t broken Alpie’s horse yet is because he’s busy harboring Gabriel Jimmyboy, and he tries to blackmail Smith into collecting the reward money on his behalf. After all, he’s a government official. Accepting a bounty looks an awful lot like bribery, but getting Smith to take it in exchange for a fraction of the cash and literally nothing else is A-Okay. Well, there’s no reason whatsoever for Smith to agree to this so he tells Walter to screw off in his own mild-mannered way. Later on, Norah hears that Smith refused a way out of their money troubles, and she’s furious. She doesn’t care that the deal was incredibly unfair. She only cares that they’re in danger of losing the farm. Everything rides on the hired ranch hands showing up to cut their hay crop and she just knows they can’t be counted on because, guess what, they’re not white. Literally. That is the reason given.

While working on some repairs, Smith and Alpie hear Vince’s dogs baying. They watch, frozen with fear, as the hounds burst into the cabin. Luckily, Jimmyboy isn’t there. Still, it’s a close enough call that Alpie feels like he should come clean. While he’s building up the courage, Vince confronts Smith to yell over all the time he wasted getting a search warrant. Smith and his crazy notions about justice, legality, and the Fourth Amendment applying to everyone gave Jimmyboy two extra days to escape. Smith tells him the fugitive is hidden in an abandoned copper mine, just to get rid of him, but whoops, he actually is hiding in a copper mine. Father and son dash off through the dust to beat the overzealous cop to the mine. Vince still gets there first, but he and his hounds don’t find anything.

We’re not out of the woods yet, though. The dogs pick up a new trail and lead Vince and his assistant back to… the sheriff’s office? What? Sure enough, there’s Jimmyboy, waiting silent and sullen at Antoine’s side to turn himself in. The Sheriff lays the smackdown on Vince for his excessive force and gets to work on the paperwork so Antoine can get his reward money. Antoine ends up driving out with Walter Charlie in the back of a shiny used convertible. Who cares that the brakes don’t work and they crash almost immediately? Who cares that Walter Charlie totally swindled Antoine out of cash that was supposed to go towards helping Jimmyboy? Not the cops, that’s for sure.

The “best lawyer possible” plan has fallen through and Gabriel Jimmyboy is really starting to regret not just running away to Canada. Smith visits him in his cell to drop some meaningless platitudes about how everything’s going to be just peachy, they just have to trust the system. After all, America’s justice system has always been and will always be super fair and kind to unjustly accused brown people. Before Jimmyboy can point this out, Vince storms in to prove that point. He’s moving Jimmyboy to another jail where he’ll be convicted for sure, and he’s all too excited about the idea of “that Indian” being hanged.

Smith goes berserk and reminds Vince that he was there the night of the murder. He knew Sam Hardy was cheating his neighbors because of their race and filling them with cheap booze to encourage them to make poor gambling decisions that let him steal their money. Vince could have stopped the fight but he didn’t, because up until Hardy’s death, only Native American people were hurt. Vince’s involvement would have made a really interesting twist in a better movie, but this is literally the first time we’ve heard the details of the case past “a white man got killed”. Knowing Sam Hardy was actually terrible way earlier would have made Gabriel Jimmyboy so much more sympathetic and made it so much more important to the audience that he got justice, but up until this point it was entirely possible that he had actually committed the crime. We shouldn’t have had to wait this long to find out what happened. Who greenlit this script???

I’m about as frustrated with this utter failure of a crime drama as Smith is when he storms away from Vince. Not two seconds later, Walter’s new car swerves into a wall, narrowly missing Smith’s body. He crows that he’s planning on driving Antoine out to Williamstown for the trial, which only adds to Smith’s bad mood. How could he turn an innocent man in for a car? Poor sweet trusting Antoine confesses that Walter told him he’d translate the trial in a way that would sway the jury in Jimmyboy’s favor, in exchange for getting a free lawyer from the Indian Bureau. Remember when Antoine didn’t trust the Indian Bureau? Pepperidge Farm remembers. Furious, Smith gets into his car to escape the situation, but Walter Charlie tries to drag race with him for literally no reason except that people in the ’60s really liked car chases. It last way too long and the upshot is the fancy convertible with the faulty brakes careens out of control down a hill and into a pond. But at least no one’s hurt.

The Smith farm’s finances are hurting, but only Norah notices. Smith is too busy making a care package for Jimmyboy. It’s okay, though, because McDonald Lasheway and his Hay Crew are here! That is not a weird bluegrass metal fusion band, but the harvesters Smith hired to work. The farm is saved! Or… not. They’re just passing by on the way to watch the trial, in complete breach of their contract with Smith. Smith begs them to stay, but they’ll be back before haying season ends. Probably. Maybe. By the way, McDonald is played by the legendary Jay Silverheels, better known as Tonto from the original Lone Ranger. That’s the last straw for Norah, who storms out into the barn to fume. Smith finds her and apologizes for being a terrible rancher and a worse husband, and the two get all smoochy and snuggly as they reminisce on better times and remind us all that they really do love each other.

I know we were all so worried about their relationship drama, but rest assured, Norah is all smiles as she helps Smith harvest their hay crop themselves while Alpie listens to the radio for news on the trial. Another old Native American neighbor named Young Alexander putters up on his bright yellow motorbike. This guy brings news as bad as his wig: now Antoine’s in jail! He went to the wrong court and because his English isn’t great, he accidentally told the judges he was an old drunk and got himself locked up for five days. He’s going to miss the trial, and Jimmyboy’s only hope is for Smith pay $10 to bail him out. Oh, and the lawyer from the Indian Bureau? Young and inexperienced with a vested interest in making things worse. Only our favorite white savior can make things right again. Norah knows she can’t stop her husband so she slams the money from her disaster fund down on the table. He promises to come back as soon as he can and she makes fun of the Native Americans’ accents which is doubly gross because Hollywood essentially made that accent up to begin with. Oh, and she wants Alpie to learn more about the world so she sends him along with Smith. Because sure.

Meanwhile, Gabriel Jimmyboy’s lawyer Donald Maxwell does his best to get his client to talk. He refuses to talk until Antoine shows up because Fifth Amendment Rights Baybee, and also Maxwell is completely incompetent. Also, three quarters of the way into the movie, we finally learn more about what happened that night: the town saw Jimmyboy climbing out Sam Hardy’s window right before Hardy was found. That’s pretty damning evidence, and it’ll be hard to argue against it without the star witness, especially since Maxwell is a coward. There’s only one competent sympathetic white guy around to save the day, and he’s still driving. Alpie’s starting to get really nervous about the trial, and Smith probably doesn’t help by choosing this moment to explain systemic racism to his six year old. And he lets Alpie steer the car!

Alpie doesn’t kill them both and they find their whole town has gathered in Williamstown’s diner. This includes Vince Hebert, a witness for the prosecution, and Walter Charlie, who plunks himself down beside the Smiths. He’s all but given up on Gabriel’s innocence and he’s livid to hear that Antoine’s in jail. Not because he cares about either of the other two. Oh, no. This just makes him look bad as a Native American court official. It’s allll about him. There are actually a few little asides that got some genuine laughs out of me. The waitress an’t get a word in edgewise to take their drink orders, and when she does, Alpie tries to order coffee. And with a little coaxing, Smith lets him! But mostly, it’s just Walter and Smith snipping at each other. As Walter starts to storm out away from the argument, some random guy takes offense to Walter grumbling in his tribal language. Smith tries to break it up, but the diner’s burly cook mistakes him for the troublemaker and decks him. A bunch more guys pull the cook off, including the initial aggressor which is weird, and the chef is horrified that he’d attack someone who’s such a beacon of pure righteous righteousness. And Walter slips out unnoticed.

Finally, after over an hour of worrying and talking and not a whole lot of anything else, the trial begins. And it doesn’t get off to a great start. Maxwell still has no star witness and Jimmyboy humiliates him for his cowardice in front of the entire court which doesn’t seem to me like the best way to prove your innocence. It’s okay though! Smith is here to make everything all better! And he’s brought Antoine! The largely Native American spectators buzz with excitement as the game changing witness slowly makes his way inside. He speak to Jimmyboy in their indigenous language (I wish I knew which language this was, I’m so uncomfortable with referring to it like that), so the judge calls Walter in to translate his testimony. But the white spectators roar with laughter when he starts telling a story about fighting with Chief Joseph against white savages many years ago.

After a whole lot of condescending nonsense at the expense of an old man trying to pour his heart out, the court allows Smith to take Walter’s place as interpreter. After all, Walter’s not exactly doing a bang-up job staying impartial. Mostly he’s inciting the white folks to make fun of Antoine’s story, which is quickly threatening to turn ugly. Finally, Antoine tells them about how many battles his people have fought against the white aggressors. He outlines all the loved ones he’s lost, and all the injustices they’ve faced since. They all just want peace. He never addresses the actual case, but the implication is abundantly clear: Gabriel Jimmyboy would never have committed an act of violence. He’s just as tired of fighting as the rest.

Only one person remains unmoved. It’s Vince Hebert, of course, He laughs and jeers that that’s all ridiculous and Antoine should go back to jail along with all other indigenous people, all while making fun of them in that awful cliched accent. Antoine and the other First Nations peoples may not want to fight, but Smith ain’t First Nations and he’s had just about enough of this. He slugs Vince in the stomach and the two brawl in the aisles, ignoring the judge’s calls for order. It’s really satisfying, not going to lie. Still, there are consequences for going aggro in a courthouse, and Smith is sentenced to a fine of $50. He gloats that he’s only too happy to pay any amount for the satisfying of throwing down with Vince, which isn’t quite what the judge was looking for. So he sentences him to 30 days in jail on top of it. Now Smith is horrified. It’s haying time! His wife will be furious! But there’s nothing else for it. He asks McDonald to take Alpie home and gives his son the leftover money to return to his mother. But Norah’s still probably going to actually kill him.

Mr. Edwards, lawyer for the prosecution, congratulates Maxwell on a job well done. Sure enough, Gabriel Jimmyboy is cleared of all charges! By the way, Edwards is only a bit part but he’s played by John Randolph who I know as Clark Griswold’s dad in Christmas Vacation and it is the most interesting thing about this movie. Anyway, the whole indigenous tribe celebrates the victory with singing and dancing and a big bonfire, as traditional as can be while drumming on cars instead of, you know, drums. Alpie’s happy to celebrate too, but he does have some concerns about getting the hay cut with Smith in jail. He’s not the only one determined to get Smith out of this. Maxwell marches up to the judge’s office to declare he’s standing up for Smith. All right, he’s not doing it out of the goodness of his heart. Antoine hasn’t moved off the courthouse steps since Smith’s arrest, out of protest. To the judge’s shock, Antoine sasses him in English, but when the judge tries to explain how inconvenient his protest is to everyone else suddenly Antoine reverts to his mother tongue. Maxwell cuts in to assure the judge that Smith will be on his best behavior if he’ll just agree to a retrial. And he does!

Back at the farm, there’s no alternative but for Norah and Alpie to start on the hay crop by themselves. It’s a lot of work for two people, and this would be so much easier if she had her lazy good-for-nothing husband. Hey, look, there he is! He climbs out of the miraculously un-crashed convertible and into Norah’s mower, declaring that he’s taking over whether she likes it or not. Just like every other scene she’s in, she yells at him, but she did miss him and she does love him so he gets a big old kiss when she’s done with her tirade. And the good news doesn’t end there! McDonald Lasheway and the Hay Crew made it to the gig! And the rest of the town showed up to help! The farm has plenty of hands and cutting the hay will be no problem at all, Gabriel Jimmyboy is innocent, and all the white folks and the Native Americans are getting along just peachy keen. Antoine promises he’ll break Alpie’s horse today as repayment for all Smith has done. And the movie ends on some vaguely mystic metaphoric nonsense about how Smith is just the best beacon of hope and shelter and goodness and light and salvation and hold my hair I’m going to be sick.

I know what Disney was trying to do with this one. The message is supposed to be about helping others when they need it with a side order of anti-racism. That’s super great and all, except Disney utterly failed at any of it. They tried so hard to be anti-racist that they looped back around and made all the Native American characters completely helpless without our white lead to fix all their problems for them. It’s incredibly backwards, especially after I praised The Love Bug so highly for showing capable, intelligent characters of color. And that’s not the only problem this film has. The plot is incredibly slow-moving and confused, and we only get the facts of the case in bits and pieces very late in the film. Characters just kind of show up, always with the same introduction: “It’s ___!”, and most of them have no personality traits other than their race. Everything about it is a disaster, even for a Western. And you all know how much I hate Westerns.

CHARACTERS

??? Smith is just so good you guys. He’s so helpful. He’s so smart. He’s so generous. He’s so good and we should all just thank the deity of our choosing that there are people like Smith in the world because he’s just SO. GOOD. Okay, seriously, the movie’s so heavy handed about how Smith solves everyone’s problems and he’s the only one who can help anyone, especially if the person in need happens to be Native American. The hero-worship is nauseating, and it infantilizes the indigenous characters to a truly insulting degree. I think they were trying to set Western superstar Glenn Ford up as the next Brian Keith or Fess Parker, but it didn’t pan out which is probably for the best.

Norah Smith could have easily been a counterpoint to all that reverence. She’s frustrated by Smith’s inability to sit down and take care of things at home, like their failing farm, but she loves him anyway. All that’s fine. The problem is that the movie takes it way too far and fails to show any positives to their relationships. She’s just constantly nagging and berating him, and wasting no opportunity to insult the Native American people in their town like they invading her space which is, you know, a bit rich. She’s as bad as Vince Hebert but we’re not supposed to think so and it’s infuriating. Poor Nancy Olson got stuck with another dud character after Betsy from The Absent-Minded Professor films. At least she Pollyanna.

Alpie Smith exists to appeal to the kids in the audience. It’s still a Disney film after all, even if it’s got some very grown-up (read: boring) themes and almost zero action. He’s on the same road as his dad, using his maaagical ability to see past race to be just the best ever. He’s precocious to a fault and interested in the proceedings around them, even if he doesn’t fully understand them. He does try, though. His weirdly eloquent speech pattern reminded me a lot of Linus from the Peanuts, and it turns out there’s a reason for that. Christopher Shea actually voiced Linus in the two best known Peanuts specials, A Charlie Brown Christmas and my personal favorite, It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown! And yeah, it’s incredibly obvious. I’m wondering if they tried to use Linus’s same manner of speaking as a subconscious marketing thing since the Peanuts were so popular at this time, or if that’s just how this kid talked.

Vince Hebert exists so Nora doesn’t look quite as bad. No guys, this is the Overt Racist! Look how he wants to persecute people for their race! Look at how he’s mocking and laughing at their pain! Everyone else is a much better person than this! I mean, there’s probably something to be said about him being a cop, but still, him being absolute scum doesn’t make anyone else’s actions okay. It’s also really weird seeing Keenan Wynn in a dramatic role after Alonso P Hawk in The Absent-Minded Professor. Just throwing that out there.

Gabriel Jimmyboy should have been the central figure in this movie. I’m finishing up my masters in creative writing right now, and the first thing they bash into your skull is that a character has to want something. Gabriel Jimmyboy wants to be proven innocent. That’s much more sympathetic and much simpler than Smith wants to come to Gabriel Jimmyboy’s rescue because he’s white and Gabriel is Native American and only white people can be heroes. Okay, I went off a little bit there, but you get what I’m saying. If Jimmyboy had been more than a background character-slash-Macguffin, we could have established way earlier that he was falsely accused and needs to clear his name. Instead, he spends all of his limited screentime glowering at the camera, usually behind a gun, which kind of ruins the effect. What’s more, we learn very little about what actually happened to Sam Hardy and the testimony that proves Jimmyboy innocent has little to do with the case. Seriously, I don’t know anything about law, but that cannot be admissable. It’s such a missed opportunity for such a terrible reason. Oh, and Frank Ramirez is not even trying to hide his Columbian accent. Not even a little bit.

Old Antoine fits the whole “mystical chief” stereotype as well as he possibly can in a movie with no actual mysticism. Most of his lines are in his mother tongue, which is fine, except when he does speak English it’s usually some metaphorical pseudo-deep garbage delivered in that made-up accent. Or it’s played as the butt of a joke about his age and race. One of the two. Sometimes both. It’s great, guys. Really just flippin great. One thing I can say in his favor is that Chief Dan George is a member of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, meaning that at least some tiny amount of effort was put into the casting. I mean, Jimmyboy is Latino and Walter Charlie is white with a terrible spray tan, but they tried somewhere.

MUSIC

Man, I need to get better at notetaking. I don’t remember too much about Robert F Brunner’s score and I didn’t write anything particularly jarring down. There was a lot of banjo strumming in case you forgot this was a Western, and a booming dramatic overture that didn’t fit with the rest of the film. They also do that thing I like where they reprise the theme song in instrumental form a few times in the incidental music. Unfortunately…

The Ballad of Smith and Gabriel Jimmyboy is terrible. It’s terrible. What does ‘he clutches his protection like a toy” even mean?? It’s more nonsense about how Smith is just the greatest human being since Mr. Rogers with a heaping helping of infantilizing Gabriel Jimmyboy who, if you look up, looks to be about 40. But sure. He’s an Indian boy who needs Smith’s incorruptible whiteness to save him. Sure. And Bob Russell’s music is no better than his lyrics. It sounds like a Monkees parody and it’s really out of place with the Western setting. Somebody at the studio must have been a big fan, too, because this inexplicably isn’t the last we’ll hear out of Russell, who is best known for writing He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.

ARTISTRY

It’s a Western, guys. I’m running out of ways to say “this movie sucks”. Okay, to be fair, Robert C. Moreno’s cinematography is competent for the most part, but competent ain’t the same as interesting. There’s a lot of long shots and closeups and not a lot of eye-catching angles or anything like that. It’s just kinda… there. Also, the day for night that appears every so often is appalling. I know technology for that kind of thing wasn’t anywhere near what is now, but we’ve seen better day for night. This just turns everything this strange shade of teal that makes it really hard to see anything that’s happening. And it does it a lot.

FINAL THOUGHTS

This movie is an utter failure on almost every possible level. It fails at being anti-racist, it fails at being a crime story, it fails at being a coherent story. It’s just bad all around. Not the worst we’ve seen but pretty close. It’s almost the end of the ’60s. It shouldn’t feel like we’re still in 1955.

Favorite scene: Alpie trying to order coffee while his dad looks at him like “wait what”. The only genuine smile I had through this whole mess.

Final rating: 1/10. I’m so, so disappointed after the steps forward The Love Bug made. It wasn’t perfect either, but it was miles better than this.