June 1, 2010: Rancho Deluxe
Can you believe that there’s a movie that Jimmy Buffett wrote all the music for, and I haven’t ever seen it? Mind you, I know this DVD has run in my presence at least once before, but this is the first time I’ve ever sat down to actually watch Rancho Deluxe (1975). And I was in for a bit of a treat, though surely not a flawless masterpiece.
Sam Waterston and Jeff Bridges play two laid-back young cattle rustlers in Montana who are trying to make a big score – to steal and sell a whole bunch of someone else’s cattle – but they aren’t really in it for the money, just for the sport. Elizabeth Ashley and the goofy sheriff from Superman II (1980) are new ranch owners from New York who don’t want any more of their cattle stolen so they hire Slim Pickens (well-known for riding a nuclear warhead as if it were a bull in 1964 at the end of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb) to find the thieves.
The film tries to be offbeat and funny but doesn’t quite get off the ground. Rancho Deluxe is more interesting as a window into the early acting careers of Waterston (best known as Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy on Law and Order from 1994-2010) and Jeff Bridges (who has been well-known for decades and won an Oscar for last year’s Crazy Heart). They play well off each other, Bridges being a rich kid who threw away the trappings of wealth, and Waterston being of native descent and low-key in a different way. That irreverent tone is already clearly there in Bridges. Harry Dean Stanton, one of my favourite character actors, plays one of the guards hired by the ranching couple to watch over the herd, and he’s as acidic as ever.
The DVD cover has the smiling mugs of Waterston and Bridges in cowboy hats on the front, and the back has an old Lincoln Continental with at least 55 bullet holes in it (yes, I counted). The movie is exactly what you would expect based on that.
Lost time capsule, flawed but fascinating.
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