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Bronco Billy

1980, Movie, PG, 119 mins

Bronco Billy: Review

BRONCO BILLY was Clint Eastwood's seventh directorial assignment and it is a wonderful movie. Why this humane comedy failed at the box office is a mystery. Billy (Eastwood) is the owner of a Wild West show peopled with losers he has picked up in his travels. Eastwood is perfection as the New Jersey shoe clerk who, like Miniver Cheevey, dreamed a nostalgic dream and took action to realize it. The actor-director could have gone over the top by satirizing the very character he played so well in spaghetti westerns; instead he gives a sincere, realistic performance that silenced detractors who thought he could only play violent loners. In fact, all the actors (save the untalented Locke) play their roles naturally and lovingly in this paean of praise to days that once were. With this film, Eastwood showed continued improvement behind the camera, but it wasn't until BIRD that the "establishment" took him seriously as a major director.