Renowned actor Robert Redford has passed away at 89 years old. He was a fantastic actor who appeared in and directed scores of great films. He founded the Sundance Film Festival, and was a noted proponent of environmental causes, LGBTQ rights, and the arts.
Most people cite Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, All the President’s Men, Ordinary People (director), and Catch 22 among his best, and they are, and there are many more amazing movies he was a part of, but as a kid in the late 70s/early 80s, these are my 3 favs.
THE ELECTRIC HORSEMAN (1979) – Sydney Pollack directs Redford and Jane Fonda as aging, beaten-up rodeo star Sonny Steele and big-city reporter Hallie Martin. Appalled by the drugging and parading of thoroughbred horse Rising Star across stages on the Las Vegas Strip, Sonny, hungover and still a bit drunk, clad in a ridiculous technicolor lit-up Hollywood dime-store cowboy getup, rides the horse across the casino floor and out into the desert where he’s chased and transitions in the public eye from thief to hero with a backdrop of corporate greed and marketing, old-school cowboy values, and an unlikely (albeit predictable) love affair. Fonda is a bit stiff at times, the script a bit obvious at moments, but there are some amazing scenes, and a great ending that leaves you feeling more human than you did before the movie started. And the soundtrack rules - including an amazing version of Redford’s co-star Willie Nelson doing “Midnight Rider.”
“Mister Steele, why were you late for the press conference?”
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I was giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a bottle of tequila. I’m afraid we lost her.”
BRUBAKER (1980) – I’m a sucker for a good prison film, especially one set in the sticky, hot, deep south, and fresh off the heels of Escape from Alcatraz comes Brubaker. Redford plays the title role, sent to reform Wakefield prison in the back fields of Arkansas where racism and forced labor reign supreme, and human rights are not even an afterthought. He discovers an old, hidden graveyard where scores of abused and forgotten prisoners from decades past were buried, and that ruffles the feathers of his nemesis, the prison board and local government, who prefer the outta-sight-outta-mind approach to the atrocities. His efforts to improve conditions at the prison move forward, the inmates start to buy-in, and things seem to get better, until they don’t. Murry Hamilton (Jaws), Morgan Freeman, David Harris (The Warriors), and an unaccredited Nicholas Cage are all on screen, among many other notables. It’s a dark movie that isn’t often in the discussion of Redford’s best, but I watch it at least once a year.
JEREMIAH JOHNSON (1972) – Another Pollack film, certainly the most known of these 3, and one of my all time favorites. It was a natural attraction after the Grizzly Adams obsession I had, and I’ve probably seen it 50 times. Johnson follows (or precedes, more accurately) the Grizzly Adams story of a man disgruntled with the modern world who walks into the mountains and finds himself. (Adams was falsely accused of a crime and Johnson wasn’t…) As in Brubaker, things are just looking up when they go south, and he finds himself in a grief and rage induced war with the Crow nation. There is no shortage of interesting characters he encounters along the way, and the general sense is that they’re all just trying to figure it out as they go. It gets dark, scary and cold, but there are moments of warmth and redemption too, with wonderful camerawork and cinematography in the Rocky Mountain wilderness. A masterpiece of a film.
Jeremy Porter lives near Detroit, fronts the rock and roll band Jeremy Porter And The Tucos, and plays acoustic shows all over the place. Follow him and them on Facebook to read his road blog about their adventures on the dive-bar circuit.
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