THE COWBOY WAY
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1994 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Woody Harrelson, Kiefer Sutherland, Ernie Hudson,
Dylan McDermott.
Screenplay: Bill Wittliff.
Director: Gregg Champion.
At some point, when our collective back was turned, Woody Harrelson became a box office draw. All right, I'm not saying people flocked to WHITE MEN CAN'T JUMP or INDECENT PROPOSAL thanks to his name above the title. Nevertheless, Harrelson has demonstrated an enviable talent for picking hits, even if that has been the only thing he has really demonstrated in his fledgling big screen career. THE COWBOY WAY is in for a much harder ride towards success, facing stiff summer competition, but whatever its box office take, there might be more in it for Harrelson to be proud of personally than any of his previous films. Given the challenge of carrying a film for the first time, he takes a tedious formula picture and singlehandedly makes it at least moderately endearing.
THE COWBOY WAY stars Harrelson and Kiefer Sutherland as Pepper Lewis and Sonny Gilstrap, two New Mexico rodeo champions and longtime friends. That friendship is currently strained at best due to Sonny's lingering resentment over a championship event at which the gleefully irresponsible Pepper was a no-show. The two reluctantly re-connect when an old friend disappears and the trail leads to New York City. There Pepper and Sonny encounter Stark (Dylan McDermott), a shady character running a coyote operation bringing in illegal immigrants and forcing them to work in garment sweat shops. Among the victims is the daughter of Pepper and Sonny's friend, leading the two and their newfound friend on the New York police force (Ernie Hudson) to try to save her the cowboy way.
I could easily name fifty variations on this particular theme which have graced the screen since I have been a regular movie-goer; fish-out-of-water comedy is as venerable a genre as the Western itself. We all know the required elements: a plot point landing the hero in the strange locale (usually a kidnapped or murdered friend); a few scenes of the hero interacting with the locals, oblivious to his own faux pas; a patient local to befriend the hero; a hissably arrogant bad guy. THE COWBOY WAY fits every one perfectly creating that comfortable familiarity filmmakers seek much more frequently than originality. The tweaks to that formula THE COWBOY WAY incorporates run from the obvious (the friendly cop has a romance with cowboy mythology) to the mildly interesting (Dylan McDermott's insecure villain), but let's be frank. THE COWBOY WAY does not, nor was it meant to, dazzle with its inventiveness. In fact, there are long stretches when it's a crashing bore.
The showpiece here is the energetic performance of Woody Harrelson, who has a great deal of fun with the lovably oafish Pepper. In many ways, THE COWBOY WAY plays like little more than a series of setups for Pepper to do something stupid, which could have been a nightmare if so many of those stupid things weren't so funny. His motor-mouthed cross-country commentary, interrupted by a long silence, is a delight; Pepper's brazen advances towards a cellist in a posh restaurant is even more so. Harrelson makes Pepper an eager-to-please puppy of a guy, his every movement an ill-fated attempt to impress. There is even a great throwaway moment near the climactic chase when Harrelson gets out of Sutherland's pickup truck and asks, "Lock up?" then proceeds to push the button down through the open window. As long as Harrelson was on the screen, THE COWBOY WAY kept me smiling.
If only there was one interesting person for him to interact with. Kiefer Sutherland continues to show that screen presence is a recessive Sutherland family trait, reading every line as though he had something on the stove that he really needed to get back to. Sonny is supposed to be level-headed, but Sutherland interprets "level-headed" as "comatose," much as he did in last year's THE THREE MUSKETEERS. Marg Helgenberger of TV's "China Beach" has a pointless role as a New York socialite who drags Pepper to a party straight out of MIDNIGHT COWBOY, and poor Carlos Guzman adds to his resume of hoods. THE COWBOY WAY is a tired premise filled with tired-looking actors, but Woody Harrelson was able to lasso me by the neck and take me along for the ride. I'd like to see a home video version where the plot is edited out entirely; it just ends up getting in Harrelson's way.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 fish out of water: 5.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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