Bad Company

• Director: Robert Benton
• AMG Rating:
• Genre: Drama
• Movie Type: Hybrid Western, Period Film
• Themes: Crime Sprees, Cons and Scams, Sheriffs and Outlaws
• Main Cast: John Boyd
• Release Year: 1972
• Country: US
• Run Time: 91 minutes

Plot

Set during the Civil War, Bad Company stars Barry Brown as a Northern boy, Drew Dixon, who heads West to avoid getting drafted. He falls under the spell of Jake Rumsey (Jeff Bridges), an easygoing young con artist. Drew joins Jake's gang of boy bandits, who live by their wits and try to avoid confrontation with adult criminals like Big Joe (David Huddleston). It is Drew who must eventually save Jake from hanging, even though he realizes that his intervention could lead to his own execution. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Review

Making his assured directorial debut with an intelligently entertaining genre piece, Robert Benton takes a decidedly unsentimental view of the frontier myths of male bonding and opportunity for the Western Bad Company (1972). Set during the Civil War, Benton and Bonnie and Clyde (1967) collaborator David Newman's screenplay subtly evokes the Vietnam era in its focus on two young draft dodgers, pious Barry Brown and larcenous Jeff Bridges. Rather than a place of freedom and opportunity, the West they find is an unglamorous prairie wasteland of petty thieves, physical threats, rough justice, and shifting loyalties. Benton maintains a low-key, thoughtful tone occasionally leavened by bits of humor, while Gordon Willis' expressive, autumnal cinematography and Harvey Schmidt's piano score quietly underline the evolution of Brown's upstanding values as he confronts the West's moral relativity. Though not as well-known as such other contemporary revisionist Westerns as The Wild Bunch (1969) and Little Big Man (1970), Bad Company stands as another engaging elegy to the ultimate American myth. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Cast

Jean Allison - Dixon's Mother; Jeff Bridges - Jake Rumsey; Claudia Bryar - Mrs. Clum; Damon Cofer - Jim Bob Logan; Jim Davis - Marshall; Ted Gehring - Zeb; Raymond Guth - Jackson; Monika Henreid - Min; Jerry Houser - Arthur Simms; David Huddleston - Big Joe; Ed Lauter - Big Joe's Gang; Geoffrey Lewis - Hobbs; Todd Martin - Sergeant; John Quade - Nolan; John Savage - Loney; Charles Tyner - Egg Farmer; Ned Wertimer - Dixon's Father; Barry Brown - Drew Dixon; Joshua Hill Lewis - Boog Bookin; John Boyd - Prisoner

Credit

Robert Gundlach - Art Director, Anthea Sylbert - Costume Designer, Howard W. Koch - First Assistant Director, Robert Benton - Director, Ron Kalish - Editor, Ralph Rosenblum - Editor, Harvey Schmidt - Composer (Music Score), Paul Sylbert - Production Designer, Gordon Willis - Cinematographer, Stanley Jaffe - Producer, Audrey Blasdel-Goddard - Set Designer, Gene S. Cantamessa - Sound/Sound Designer, David Newman - Screenwriter, Robert Benton - Screenwriter

Similar Movies

The Beguiled; The Fool Killer; The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid; Little Big Man; McCabe & Mrs. Miller; Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid; The Wild Bunch; Dirty Little Billy; Kid Blue; Thieves Like Us; Ride With the Devil

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