User Reviews

So many movies got by me in the Seventies and Eighties that it's an occasional treat to catch one now that delivers in an entertaining fashion. I've never been a fan of Jane Fonda because of her politics, but there's not a scene here in which she doesn't look great, and not a scene where Robert Redford doesn't look like,... the Sundance Kid. He brings the same facial mannerisms and reactions to bear here as in his more acclaimed role, which by the way happens to be one of my all time favorite films. I guess teaming him up with a horse is just the right trick.

The story has some of the elements that show up in my favorite movies as well, that of an underdog taking on a mission that's somehow larger than himself. By riding Silver Star off of a Las Vegas night club stage and into the Western wilderness, Sonny Steele is at the same time attempting to find personal redemption from a life overcome by glitz and crass commercialism. In the process, Fonda's character falls victim to a journalist's primary obstacle, that of becoming part of the story she's covering as a reporter.

I recall seeing trailers for the film back when it first came out; who can forget the image of the Electric Horseman as Redford mounts up on Silver Star and takes on the appearance of a Christmas tree on the Las Vegas strip. The story behind the picture still has relevance today, even more so than back in the Seventies, as each successive year's technology and focus on celebrity removes us further and further away from the things that matter most. Oddly, watching the picture today, it felt more like a made for TV movie than a major theatrical release. Another example of how each new blockbuster film today has to try and outdo the one before with even more elaborate glamor and special effects.

There must be some potential in the plot because it's a salmagundi of familiar elements. There's the story of the guy who escapes the trap of civilization and its glitter in favor of real life on the natural frontier. "Lonely Are the Brave" is an example. Should I mention "Huckleberry Finn"? Then there's the guy who has won all the possible kudos and is now over the hill, gets drunk, and then "finds himself" again, as in "Rocky II". Or was it "Rocky III"? I forget. Anyway, there are myriad examples floating around in the ether. "Jim Thorpe: All American." There's also the story of a kinda dumb but regular guy who is followed around by a cute, sophisticated lady with her own agenda and who betrays him before realizing her mistake. It was a Frank Capra specialty. "Meet John Doe" will serve.

The elements don't quite come together. Redford is not a hick, although he tries hard. He's an ex champion rodeo rider but we don't learn anything about the skills that are involved. He's been shat upon by Fortuna and now he's reduced to having his picture on boxes of breakfast cereal, boozing it up, and riding around on a Las Vegas stage in a phony cowboy suit that's lit up like a Christmas tree. His few friends -- all of them good old boys like Willie Nelson -- are sympathetic but what can they do except remain loyal? That last bit, riding on stage in an electric suit, is too much for Redford. He waves his hat at the crowd as he deliberately saunters the horse through somebody else's act, out the door, onto the street, and into the wilderness, just him and the ironically named Rising Star.

Jane Fonda, a TV anchor babe, discovers where he is and joins him, hoping for a story, taking notes, filming him secretly. But don't worry. After they've sat around the campfire for a couple of nights and get to know one another, and after they've REALLY, if improbably, gotten to know one another, she realizes that the corrupt city values she represents are revolting.

The director and most of the others involved have dumbed the story down. The evil guys who represent Redford's sponsors, are the kind of people known as "suits." They all wear glasses, most look effete, a few look goofy, and whatever the boss, John Saxon, thinks, is the right thing to think. The good people are all rustics. Not only are they spiritually clean, they'll give you the shirt off their backs.

Redford doesn't help much. He's pretty taciturn -- "Yup" and "Nope" -- and that's okay as far as it goes but when he gets emotional he seems mannered. He's done a lot better than that. Jane Fonda looks pretty good considering her age. When she's wearing a wool cap pulled over her ears, and staring wide-eyed at Redford, she looks like a pretty, thirteen-year old with big teeth. But neither is really convincing. You rarely lose the conviction that you're watching two actors perform before a camera.

I wonder if they had any trouble marketing this. The intended audience is clearly not urbanites or suburbanites, but rather the people who live on small farms or isolated homesteads, and who like to hunt. And who do the producers use to appeal to these good folk? Robert Redford, Environmentalist Number one, and Hanoi Jane. Or -- well, it's possible the producers were aiming lower than that. Maybe aiming for people who never heard of Redford and environmentalism, or Fonda and the Vietnam war. I don't know who they were aiming at but, as for me, it was an easy bullet to dodge.

Willie Nelson has a small part and he's a conundrum. I lost interest in country music years ago, in the era of Slim Whitman and Hank Thompson. "Proud to be a Okie from Muscogee" sealed it. Yet here is Willie Nelson driving a big homemade vehicle that consumes nothing but biofuels. Most of the good old boys were better guitar pickers than they're given credit for but Nelson had a tendency to reach for deep unexpected harmonics. Good man, Willie.

Man meets horse, man steals horse, man gets laid, horse gets freed. Everyone happy in the end (even the bad-guy corporation). Simple, effective. One of the best performances ever by Redford. And one of the best chase scenes anywhere, anytime. The best thing about this film is its quiet humour. It keeps throwing out these curve balls just at the right time to surprise you and charm you. In between, it takes potshots at just about everyone. First, the cowboys and the way they have (especially in Hollywood) too often allowed themselves to be made into a product - think of Roy Rogers and the Cisco Kid et al, all gussied up in the campest outfits you can imagine. (Hollywood made the West gay LONG before Brokeback Mountain hit the screen!) Next it takes on the big corporations, which (once again) only care about money and don't care who or what they exploit in order to get it. This is in fact the easiest potshot in the film, cause there is nothing really new here. And I can't really imagine a corpoation allowing itself to just say good-bye to a 12 million dollar horse. Finally, it also takes a shot at the media, who are just as bad as the corporations (since they ARE corporations usually) and the journalists who are (almost) ready to sell their souls for a good story. Nevertheless, with Redford and Fonda it works. The film tends to drag a bit near the end when they are camping out, and the requisite falling in love is a bit pat, but it isn't overdone and well, why not? The entire film is pretty much unbelievable, but it IS entertaining, and that's all it really expects to be. And above all, the chase scene is worth the price of admission.

A boozing, former Rodeo star, Sonny Steele(Robert Redford), touring as a celebrity advertising cereal, sees that a great race horse he is to ride with his suit lighted up bright is pumped full of steroids with a mistreated tendon. Instead of hopping up on the horse he deems disrespected, Sonny steals him taking to the country. Sonny hope to release the horse back into the wild, it's true habitat, but has a hard time shaking a news reporter, Alice(Jane Fonda)who wants the big story involving his journey evading police and those out to find him thanks to the cereal company he works for whose head is Hunt Sears(John Saxon).

Light and harmless, but irresistible thanks to the charming leads and their chemistry on screen. Add some good location work, and some good supporting players like Valerie Perrine as Sonny's flighty ex and Willie Nelson as Wendell, one of his cowboy buddies.

As can happen in these kind of Hollywood romancers on the road regarding a fugitive, the media plays a major role in Sonny's rise to fame for doing what he believes is right despite what consequences might occur later.

The theme of Sydney Pollack's "The Electric Horseman" is essentially the same as that of Clint Eastwood's "Bronco Billy", which came out a year later- the way in which the myth of the Wild West continued to influence American culture in the late twentieth century. As one might expect, however, from two very different directors, they treat the theme in different ways. "Bronco Billy" is essentially a patriotic film celebrating the way in which America, today as in the days of the Old West, allows its citizens to reinvent themselves, to be whatever they want to be. "The Electric Horseman", perhaps unsurprisingly given that it was directed by one great Hollywood liberal and starred two others, Robert Redford and Jane Fonda, approaches the subject from a more left-wing, anti-capitalist viewpoint. In Eastwood's film the cowboy remains a symbol of freedom and individualism; Pollack's film explores the way in which this symbol has been appropriated by the conformist, corporatist culture of Big Business.

Norman "Sonny" Steele is a former championship rodeo rider who now makes his living advertising a brand of breakfast cereal on behalf of a business conglomerate. He has a lucrative contract, which requires him to do little other than make promotional appearances, but has become a cynical, disillusioned alcoholic, haunted by the thought that he has sold out to big business and that his life has become meaningless. The film's title refers to the fact that on his public appearances Sonny is required to wear a ridiculous cowboy costume covered in electric light bulbs.

The crux of the film comes when Sonny is due to make an appearance in Las Vegas together with Rising Star, a champion racehorse. He discovers that the horse is injured and has been drugged, and on impulse decides to steal it and release it in a remote canyon where herds of wild horses live. He is pursued by the police, and also by Hallie Martin, a television reporter eager for a scoop. Hallie succeeds in catching up with Sonny, and the two fall in love.

Besides "Bronco Billy", the film also has similarities with Sam Peckinpah's "Convoy", another film from the late seventies set in the American West. The traditional Western had gone into something of a decline in this period, but both these films can be seen as "modern Westerns", especially if truck drivers can be seen as a twentieth-century equivalent of the cowboy. Both films also celebrate an ethos of individual freedom and distrust of authority, whether that authority be the legally-constituted authority of the State or the financial authority conferred by corporate wealth. Sonny releases the horse because he identifies its plight with his own; by freeing it he symbolically attains his own freedom.

Like "Convoy", "The Electric Horseman" features some striking photography of the desert landscapes of the West. It also features some fine acting, especially from Redford, who was one of Pollack's favourite actors; they also worked together in several other films, including "The Way We Were" and "Out of Africa". There are a few plot-holes; like another reviewer I thought that it was odd that Sonny, having rescued an injured horse from its owners, then proceeds to ride it hard across open country in his escape attempt. (Wouldn't that exacerbate its injury?) The film, however, was obviously not intended as a realistic story but rather as a symbolic allegory of the freedom for which both the cowboy and the untamed horse stand as symbols. As such it works very well. 7/10

Given the cast, I came to this movie with great expectations. The subject of the film is also timeless (individual dignity vs. corporate greed), so the movie *could* have been great. But it's not, because of the plot.

The drama in the story hinges on a the CEO of a corporation that spans many industries losing sleep over the guy doing ads for... cereal? Seriously? And what is the big scandal, a horse being given steroids? How exactly is that breaking news?!? As a result, the character of the journalist going full-out to get the story is forced and unnatural. Jane Fonda's acting couldn't rescue her character from the ridiculousness of the situation.

Because the plot failed to pass the believability test, the movie fell apart for me. I ended up viewing the movie with a very cynical eye. Police car chase, check. Boy meets girl, check. Cheap. And a waste of good acting.