Review of The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970) by Joaquin R — 26 Aug 2009

It was so strange, almost surreal, to see Peckinpah, the 'brains-behind-the-blood' of such classic ultra-violence as "Straw Dogs", working with such comparatively light material. But that's not to say that this isn't a good western either.

Far from it. Jason Robards crackles blissfully in the desert sun as the dusty and illiterate prospector waiting to carry out his revenge after being stranded on the flats by his would-be partners while Stella Stevens glows as the conflicted love interest and lanky David Warner (a Peckinpah regular) rolls around with a rebellious but clumsy charm as the sex-crazed preacher.

And although it's hard to spot the director's indelible stamp of approval, in the end it's got a twangy, folksy thing about it that's hard to suppress. Alongside a highly contemporized soundtrack, it all ultimately lends to a familiar death knell of the rustic, a signal for the changing times told in a way that only the last great master of westerns could do it: with humor and cautious but tragic optimism.