Nevada Smith (1966)

NEVADA SMITH is a long-winded revenge tale encompassing chapters in a man's quest for revenge. The first chapter is the most interesting--with BRIAN KEITH showing "the kid" (STEVE McQUEEN) something about handling a gun as a gunslinger should who's looking to avenge the killers of his parents.

As the killers--MARTIN LANDAU, ARTHUR KENNEDY and KARL MALDEN--give tough, gritty performances and each is slated to be avenged for the killing of Nevada Smith's parents.

But the last half of the film sags under the tacked on spiritual saga with RAF VALLONE preaching the Bible to "the kid", who promises to "keep it in mind" before he goes off to find the third man, KARL MALDEN.

It's all directed in typical Henry Hathaway fashion--ruggedly staged action against gorgeous scenic backgrounds. It's a role that suits STEVE McQUEEN as perfectly as any of his best parts. He's especially good in the early segment as the uneducated kid who comes under the tutoring of BRIAN KEITH as Jonas Cord.

The swamp scenes, where McQueen gets himself sent to prison so he can locate Arthur Kennedy, almost seem like segments from another movie he made with Dustin Hoffman--PAPILLON. HOWARD DaSILVA and PAT HINGLE play the brutal warden and his helpmate in brutal fashion. SUZANNE PLESHETTE is rather unlikely as a doomed native girl in an underwritten role.

Summing up: A revenge tale that could have been trimmed by at least 30 minutes to make a tighter western.

Fmovies: Two things stand out in a positive way in this rather grim, overblown revenge western: Cinematographer Lucien Ballard and Brian Keith in a winning, low-key supporting role. Otherwise it's one of those films that leaves you thinking about what might have been.

Steve McQueen stars as Max Sand, teenaged son of a white man and a Kiowa woman who sets out to revenge his parents' murders at the hands of three bad men in search of gold. The killers prove hard to find. On his search for revenge, Max meets up with an assortment of people that testify to the broader possibilities of life, but he can't shake the determination to inflict vengeance - whoever suffers.

It's a good concept for a story, maybe not a new one in 1966, but still worthy of in-depth treatment. But McQueen is all wrong for the main part, too old and unbelievable as a half-breed, and much of the action that takes place is highly contrived. Director Henry Hathaway and writer John Michael Hayes, working from a concept developed around a character featured in the novel and later film "The Carpetbaggers", toy with the question about whether Max's quest to settle scores is a bad thing in itself, but never develop it.

"You're a dirty low animal!" Max is told at one point by a woman who he misled in order to confront one of his parents' killers. But even when he lets innocent people die so he can make a beeline for the worst of the bad guys, Tom Fitch (Karl Malden), the film doesn't bother to suggest Max as anything other than a noble avenger. Perhaps McQueen didn't want to play a Western anti-hero. Too bad he didn't wait a few months - Clint Eastwood would have shown him how it's done.

There are a lot of problems with "Nevada Smith", but the big one I suspect - with no secondary info to back me up - was that it was conceived and largely shot as a roadshow western, then got scaled down as the producers realized they didn't have "Lawrence of Nevada" on their hands. Weird go-nowhere scenes chew time, like Max buying a can of peaches and having an inane conversation with a chuckling storekeeper, but you also get abrupt story shifts. One second Max is sitting helpless in a Louisiana swamp; the next he's leaning on a corral fence hundreds of miles away.

The film is constructed in three parts, one for each killer, but there's no reason any of them should run longer than 20 minutes. Instead, the whole film runs over two hours.

As a McQueen fan, it's distressing seeing him pressing so hard, overemoting when he confronts one of the other killers, played by Martin Landau: "Jesse Coward! Jesse Murderer! Jesse Woman Killer!" McQueen didn't scream well on camera. He also hooks up with two different women, Janet Margolin as a Kiowa maiden and Suzanne Pleshette as a Cajun laborer, neither of whom are remotely believable in underwritten roles and seem sops to McQueen's growing female fanbase.

At least there's some good moments amid the chaff, like a sequence where McQueen beats the stuffing out of a cowhand to win an amused Fitch's respect. Lucien Ballard's full-screen compositions show why he was the lensman for so many classic 1960s westerns, including Hathaway's later "True Grit". And Brian Keith as Jonas Cord, a gun dealer who befriends Sand, steals every scene he's in with gentle digs and sighs that reminds one of how terrifically Hathaway used John Wayne in "Grit": "You d

The problem with any Steve McQueen western is that none measure up to The Magnificent Seven, his best cowboy role and one of the best westerns of all time.

Nevada Smith is not a perfect screenplay but it is nonetheless entertaining. It is the tale of a young boy who seeks revenge on three men who viciously tortured and murdered his parents. It has a predictable plot and some directorial flaws, but overall it meets the criteria for a good film; it is entertaining.

At age 36, McQueen is a bit hard to believe as a 'kid'. The story obviously spans many years in Max Sand's life and if the writers had played this up more McQueen's age would not have mattered. Even showing Max and Alex Chord in a winter setting followed by spring, something to show an extensive passage of time would have helped make McQueen's age more fitting (if he'd lost weight prior to filming it would also have helped). More emphasis should have been placed on his progression from illiterate, green half-breed to savvy gun slinger. The passage of time while he learned to read, use firearms, kill his first victim and recover from wounds at the Indian village, should all have been used more extensively to make Max Sand age into the character portrayed by McQueen.

But regardless of McQueen's actual age, by the time Max kills the first of the three men he is tracking and then gets himself thrown into a Louisiana prison to find another one, his character's age and looks are believable.

A superb cast of supporting actors backs up McQueen. Brian Keith is the perfect father figure who takes Max in and teaches him to use firearms and tells him about life and how to find the men who killed his parents. Suzanne Pleshette cannot be made to look bad no matter how hard the make up department tries. Even dirty and sweaty in the swamp, her natural beauty and class shine. These traits and her unique voice and soft movements steal any scene she is in. She almost upstages McQueen. Martin Landau, Arthur Kennedy and Karl Malden are as bad as any movie villains I ever saw.

POSSIBLE SPOILER: In the end, Max does the right thing. He purges his hate and embraces the bigger meaning of life. He doesn't forgive the murderers; he just elevates himself above them. He doesn't kill Fitch, instead after wounding him severely he walks away from a life of violence. For some reason, I believe he returns to the Indian tribe of his birth and to Neesa, the Indian woman who truly loves him. In any case, ultimately the film works.

Nevada Smith fmovies. Though there isn't much here that you haven't seen before in a western revenge drama, it's pretty well done. You can understand why the protagonist turns away at any chance of a normal life and instead concentrates on nothing but revenge. And it is undeniably satisfying to see him enact his revenge any chance he gets.

It's good for what it is, though there are some problems, that if tweaked, could have made the movie even better. For one thing, casting McQueen as a half-Indian? And casting this mid-30s actor as a character that's supposed to be young enough to be called "Kid"!?!? Plus, the escape from the swamp doesn't seem finished; in fact, with the short sequence where one of McQueen's pursuers commenting on the bullets he has left makes me believe that several minutes were edited out before the movie was released.

This sidebar story from Harold Robbins THE CARPETBAGGERS was given class treatment by Paramount as a vehicle for McQueen, who lends some authenticity to a rather routine character motivated by a quest to avenge the brutal slaying of his parents at the beginning of the picture. Henry Hathaway lends visual elegance to what's basically a drawn-out, seedy revenge tale. Alfred Newman provides the rousing music. Moderately engaging.

This was a western with a good cast and another intense, interesting revenge story. It's fairly long at 130 minutes but Steve McQueen is usually charismatic enough to carry a film, and he does so here, too.

As the title character, "Nevada Smith," McQueen is joined by a number of well- known actors of the 1960s: Suzanne Pleshette, Karl Malden, Brian Keith, Arthur Kennedy, Raf Vallone, Martin Landau Janet Margolin and Pat Hingle.

McQueen plays a man who is totally dominated by thoughts of revenge. It motivates his every move. I don't recommend that attitude, but it makes for a good movie.

It was nice to see this in 2:35:1 widescreen. Even though I owned a new tape, that nice western photography made the DVD purchase worthwhile.