Junior Bonner

Junior Bonner is an ageing rodeo rider. He comes back to his hometown of Prescott and finds everything gone: his father chasing empty schemes, his mother alone, his brother turned developer and knocking down the family house to sell the lots. One thing is left to him, staying eight seconds on the back of a bull called Sunshine. Sam Peckinpah directed. Steve McQueen stars, with Robert Preston, Ida Lupino and Joe Don Baker. It was shot on location in Prescott, Arizona. Peckinpah took the project to get out from under his reputation as a director of violence; after The Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs he made the film nobody expected from him. Nobody is shot in it. The box office was a rout: 2.8 million dollars against a 3.2 million budget. His line about it became one of the most quoted of his career: he made a film where nobody got shot and nobody went to see it. The reviews split. Roger Ebert found it a disappointment while Kevin Thomas called it one of the most enjoyable pictures Peckinpah ever made. It was reassessed during the Peckinpah retrospectives of the 2000s. Who it is for: anyone who wants Peckinpah without violence, and quiet westerns about families coming apart. Who it is not for: viewers expecting action. The film walks slowly toward a loss and rescues nobody.