Review of Bronco Billy (1980) by Zoran S — 01 Feb 2009

This is a surprisingly smart and charming, seemingly forgotten film by Clint Eastwood. In part, it uses the metaphor of the side-show to reinterpret familiar Western genre tropes, including train robbing and Cowboys and Indians.

It is, in other words, every bit of an exercise in demythologizing as later Eastwood films as Unforgiven and Gran Torino. The tone here, however, is more ambivalent and far less violent (even though there are some subtle digs at his Dirty Harry persona here) and the film seems to want to pay tribute to the sentimental nature of the Western and even classical Romantic comedies like It Happened One Night while reminding us of their status as myths.