Lonely are the Brave1962

Another old review I found in my notes app.   So my parents still get Netflix DVDs, and I believe my dad is the one who picks the movies. So after we watched a couple of not-so-great films of his choosing, I wasn’t really looking forward to an old western. Now I love old movies and have always grown up watching them; however, I know that older westerns especially can be long and drawn out and rather boring.  Let me just say I was very pleasantly surprised. From the get-go, I was hooked. So it starts with this cowboy and his horse getting up in the morning, and then a plane (or helicopter, I can’t remember which) flies overhead. So it’s already setting up this idea of the old west fighting with the modern world.  The cowboy then heads on his way and comes across a fence. Which he proceeds to cut. He continues on and eventually comes upon a highway he needs to cross, but the horse is scared, and he has to fight it to get across, and he almost gets hit. Eventually, he makes it and passes in front of a junkyard. Then we get this great shot of a cowboy on his horse in front of a pile of wrecked cars. If a picture is worth a thousand words, this shot holds the whole script.  He then goes to a woman’s house where we assume that they used to date. We find out that her husband is in jail for helping illegal immigrants cross the border. The cowboy wants to go see him, but there’s no visiting for a few days, and by that time, he may move to the state prison. So instead of just waiting to see him like a normal person, the cowboy creates a public disturbance in a bar so he can get thrown in prison. He then punches a police officer, so he is sentenced to a year. But he makes it into the jail and finds his friend. The cowboy then tries to convince him to escape the jail, and the friend tells him that’s stupid and that he only has to serve 2 years, but if they get caught escaping, it adds 5 years. The cowboy doesn’t really care and only thinks about how he’s rather escape and have a chance to be free than to wait a year in prison. The friend eventually agrees to help the cowboy escape, but he will stay in prison. He says that he knew the cost of what he did and he is okay with staying in prison because he knows he has a family waiting for him.  The cowboy eventually escapes and goes back to the friend’s wife and tells her that her husband is okay. The cowboy then tells her that he always loved her, but he couldn’t be with her because he had to be alone and take care of himself. He then heads out on his horse and heads to the mountain nearby. I don’t know if state lines or what, but if he crosses the mountain, then he escapes, and the police can’t follow him.  The police find he’s escaped, and we follow the detective who is sent to catch him. And from this point, the movie becomes kind of a thriller as we watch the cowboy try to escape and the police try to catch him. In this section, there’s some pretty deft camera work.  There’s a shot where the camera moves through an abandoned house on the mountain and looks through the window at the cowboy. Then later, it performs the same moment and looks through the window at the detective trying to catch him. There are a lot of other great shots and moments that are pretty artistic for an older film. I feel that the camera work in most old movies is very utilitarian and just served to show what’s happening. But there are quite a few shots in this that serve no purpose other than to be art.  The cowboy then slowly makes his way up the mountain and has a few run-ins with the police as they try to catch him. He shoots down a helicopter which contains Bill Bixby (who plays Bruce Banner in the 70s Incredible Hulk) in his first acting role. Eventually, the cowboy makes it to the top and barely escapes past the police and makes it down the other side of the mountain.  I’m not going to spoil the ending, and there are a lot of things I haven’t talked about. There is definitely this theme of the modern world fighting the Old West, and it’s shown very well in the directing and in the script. Suffice it to say, this film is definitely worth the watch. It is surprisingly funny, has great dialogue, and has some pretty suspenseful moments. Rating 9.5/10