BRONCO BILLY - DVD review

If you can overlook the warm fuzzies of this film, it can be charming, lighthearted fun. Clint Eastwood went through a period in the late seventies and eighties when he chose to step out of character and do comedy: "Every Which Way But Loose" (1978), "Any Which You Can" (1980), "City Heat" (1984), "Pink Cadillac" (1989). "Bronco Billy" (1980) was the best of the lot.

Eastwood stars and directs in this story of a modern, big-city dreamer living the life of an old-fashioned cowboy in a wild west show. It gives the actor plenty of opportunity to caricature himself, which he does with seeming glee. The movie comes perilously close to the ridiculous at times but never oversteps its bounds. Perhaps this is why of all the films he's made, Eastman claims it as one of his personal favorites.

When I was very young, my favorite cowboy star was Roy Rogers. As I got older, it was John Wayne, Randolph Scott, then Eastwood. So, it's a kick seeing Eastwood doing a take-off on the kind of true-blue, children's hero Rogers epitomized. Eastwood plays Bronco Billy McCoy, sharpshooter, trick rider, and owner of Bronco Billy's Wild West Show, a flea-bag traveling circus of ragtag cowpoke entertainers. Billy speaks in wonderfully corny Western clichés ("Howdy, pardner") and lives by his own personal Code of the West ("Remember to say your prayers at night, and never kill a man unless it's absolutely necessary").

In reality, he's a phony, a former shoe salesman from New Jersey; and the rest of his crew are no more cowboys than he is. Scatman Crothers plays the show's master of ceremonies, Doc Lynch, once convicted as a medical charlatan. Sam Bottoms is Lasso Leonard James, rope twirler and army deserter. Bill McKinney is Lefty LeBow, a one-time embezzler. Dan Vadis is Chief Big Eagle, an authentic Native-American snake dancer and part-time novelist. And Sierra Pecheur plays his wife and helper, Lorraine Running Water, inauthentic Native-American. Despite their pasts, they struggle to get by, always broke but always together, always family.

Billy has two defining moments in the film, the first when he becomes a hero by foiling a bank robbery. He probably would have left it alone, but when one of the robbers has the effrontery to knock a little boy's jar of pennies to the floor, he moves to action, shooting the guns out of both the robbers' hands. The second moment is more enterprising and more truthful. While trying to bribe a small-town sheriff to release one of his men from jail, Billy is actually challenged to a duel by the gloating, gun-slinging sheriff! Eastwood and writer Dennis Hackin could have taken the easy route here, and we half expect them to. But they don't, and bless 'em for it. Instead, the movie maintains a credible balance, and, like Billy, the audience must grin and bear it.

What isn't so credible, however, is the film's major subplot involving Sandra Locke as a rich, spoiled New York City heiress, Antoinette Lily, who gets involved with Billy's show. According to her father's will, Miss Lily has to marry before she's thirty in order to inherit millions, so she goes out West to wed a dimwit she doesn't even love named John Arlington (Geoffrey Lewis). The night of their marriage, she will have nothing to do with her new husband, and the next morning he leaves her in a snit, taking her car, clothes, and money with him. Stranded in the middle of Idaho, she runs into Billy, who just happens to be looking for a new assistant, one who isn't afraid of being shot or stabbed in the show's big act. For reasons never made clear, she joins up with the troupe. Maybe it's because she knows it will displease her stepmother and the old family lawyer, both of whom are out for her money.

Anyway, a day or two later she reads in the paper that she is missing and presumed dead, and that the new husband is accused of her murder. She says nothing to the police or to Billy about who she really is and keeps working with the little company. Needless to say, in the course of her traveling with the Wild West Show, she and Billy fall in love. As Eastwood and Locke were in real life husband and wife at the time, this romance should have been a natural, but, in fact, it is the least convincing part of the story. She eyes him with unending disdain, and for the most part he simply ignores her. But they grow on one another. I suppose it's best to say opposites attract and leave it at that.

Video:
Short of the film itself there's not much to talk about. The Warner Brothers DVD, part of their "Clint Eastwood Collection," offers the film in standard and widescreen, in both cases about as average as they could possibly be. The widescreen is in a 1.77:1 ratio, a matted version of the full frame edition on the flip side of the disc. The widescreen rendering is enhanced for widescreen TVs, but that isn't saying a lot considering the image quality is none too sharp. Colors are never very bright, detail is never very clear, and grain is lightly sprinkled throughout many of the scenes. Aside from this minor grain, which may be a part of the original print, there are almost no signs of digital artifacts, dancing pixels, or jittery lines. The disc is better than video tape, and I'm not complaining too loudly.

Audio:
The sound, Dolby stereo surround, is likewise average: a decent, if limited front-channel stereo spread, some collapse into the center speaker, average dynamic and frequency ranges, and very little rear-channel activity.

Extras:
A combined Eastwood biography and filmography is the only major added attraction, along with thirty-two scene selections, and subtitles in English and French. English is the only spoken language, and there are no trailers.

Parting Thoughts:
So this isn't an audiovisual demo piece. Forget about it and enjoy the story. Running Water sums up the film's theme nicely when she says to Miss Lily, late in the film, "You can be anything you want. All you have to do is go out and become it." Surely, she means all of us. "Bronco Billy" does not present Eastwood as the Western icon we've all come to know and love, but it's Eastwood at his most heartfelt, nonetheless. It's one sweet little picture.