Big Jake

A late Wayne Western, depending heavily on recycling better (and no better) earlier pictures. Strung together in a one-suspect kidnapping yarn are the family feuds and father/son reconciliations first encountered in Shepherd of the Hills, with Hondo, The Searchers and McLintock plundered along the way. But this is 1971, the year of Dirty Harry, so a new brutality attaches awkwardly to the familiar goings on; and where the humour in The Searchers served to mark that film's epic passages of time, Big Jake's knockabout with motorbikes and mud fights merely, and tiresomely, prolongs the pursuit.