Apollo Movie Guide's Review of Bronco Billy

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Bronco Billy

Apollo Score:

Readers' Rating: 79/100

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Bronco Billy

Bronco Billy (Clint Eastwood) is an old-fashioned guy governed by old-fashioned principles. An ex-New Jersey shoe salesman, he heads a Wild West tent show to escape the banality of his previous existence. Replacing female assistants happens to be a daily occurrence, until a debutante named Antoinette Lily (Sondra Locke) enters his life and almost brings down the show single-handedly.

Much as in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, star/director Eastwood successfully captures his characters’ quirkiness. Billy’s tent show gang ranges from an Indian snake-wrangler to a rope-twirling draft dodger. We don’t learn a whole lot about these characters, so like the later film it is ultimately something akin to ‘Altman-Light’, but we learn enough to know that Billy is a well-meaning father figure.

Eastwood, much like Burt Reynolds’ character in Boogie Nights, welcomes everyone into an unconventional but strangely warm environment. These characters have abandoned careers as doctors or bank tellers to pursue something more enlightening, and Billy is happy to take them in. These people achieve solidarity and gain purpose by traveling the Mid West and providing people with old-style entertainment.

The plot revolves around Antoinette stumbling upon Bronco Billy in the midst of her marriage failing. Of course, a rich girl like Antoinette can’t just disappear, and her money-hungry stepmother convinces the family lawyer to accuse Antoinette’s wayward husband of murder.

As her family’s machinations unfold, Antoinette begins to feel at home in Billy’s world. A prudish and obnoxious woman, she eventually becomes the best assistant Billy has ever seen. This doesn’t make her any nicer, so Billy works hard to warm her heart.

This story of opposites that initially don’t attract is pretty basic and predictable stuff, but the film succeeds because of its old-fashioned humour. There’s nothing profound here and this is certainly not an accomplished morality tale like Unforgiven, but it is nonetheless a wonderful comedic diversion. The highlight of the film comes in the form of Eastwood and his posse trying to rob a train – like a flashback to his earlier career.

Eastwood is the star here and he gives a great performance as the nurturing father figure. Sondra Locke is more of an acquired taste, but I found her performance to be wholly appropriate in light of the type of character she is playing. Some might criticize Locke for not toning down the obnoxious persona once her character falls for Billy, but this honest portrayal works for me. And if there is something that Billy tries to teach everyone he encounters in his film, it is to abandon the banality of life and be yourself, embracing your full potential.

Ed Gonzalez

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