The Cowboys

All of the ranch owner Will Andersen's men leave for the gold rush. There is a herd to be driven four hundred miles and nobody left to do it. In desperation he hires the boys from the local school: the youngest is nine, the oldest fifteen. On the trail a gang picks up their trace. The film is not interested in a coming-of-age story. It is interested in the teacher being removed: halfway through, Andersen is killed, and the boys have to finish the drive and settle the account themselves. Their revenge is the film's most disputed section and those scenes are still uncomfortable. The form is classical western: wide landscape, herd sequences, campfires and a long trail. John Williams's score carries the traditional western tone. Mark Rydell directed. It is one of the few films in which John Wayne dies, a decision argued over during production; Wayne accepted the part. Roscoe Lee Browne plays the cook and Bruce Dern the gang leader. Dern later described the hostility he met from audiences for having played the man who killed Wayne. Who it is for: viewers who like classical westerns and late John Wayne. Who it is not for: anyone troubled by children taking part in violence. The film presents it as a rite of maturity and does not question it.