Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Steve McQueen Blog-a-thon: Junior Bonner


The Steve McQueen blog-a-thon begins today over at Jason Bellamy's place, The Cooler.  Make sure to keep checking in as it runs through Friday, and there are sure to be a lot of great entries submitted throughout the blog-a-thon's run.  The full review of the 1972 western Junior Bonner can be found at the western blog I contribute to, Decisions at Sundown.

"I'm workin on my first million. You're still workin on 8 seconds."

This line spoken by Curly (Joe Don Baker) Bonner to his brother Junior (Steve McQueen) gets to the heart of Sam Peckinpah's elegiac western.  This bit of harsh insight comes after Junior, an aging rodeo star, says he can't accept Curly's, an opportunistic entrepreneur looking to exploit the nostalgic charms of the Old west in an emerging culture, job offer because he has to walk down his own road. But what does that road look like for an aging rodeo star in a world that is clearly passing him by?  That is the central question surrounding Junior Bonner, Peckinpah's misunderstood western.

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