Cat Ballou (1965)
Directed by Elliot Silverstein
A woman seeking revenge for her murdered father hires a famous gunman, but he's very different from what she expects.
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What critics compared Cat Ballou to
Oscar winner Bridges, whose Cogburn is the righteous version of the unstoppable killer in the Coens’ Oscar winner “No Country for Old Men,” puts his own stamp on Marshal Cogburn, and in one hilarious scene, channels not the iconic Wayne but the great Lee Marvin of “Cat Ballou” (1965).
Like the authentic setting, Theron's seriousness grounds "Million Ways to Die," allowing us to give a pass to MacFarlane when he awkwardly emulates Kid Shelleen's drunken horse rider from "Cat Ballou" (Lee Marvin did it better), and tries to achieve Brooksian racial commentary with dubious setups.
As a writer (with Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild), MacFarlane concocts a flimsy burlesque story that draws on every offbeat oater from “Destry Rides Again” to “Cat Ballou” and “Django Unchained.”
In the venerable tradition of Cat Ballou and Blazing Saddles, Seth MacFarlane’s comedy western boasts gags galore – some a lot cruder than others.
In the whimsical, if also violent first installment, Tim Blake Nelson plays the eponymous singing and card-playing cowboy Buster Scruggs, a darkly comic and cartoonish variation on a theme of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry with a dash of the revisionist Western classic “Cat Ballou.”
Director Gore Verbinski ( The Ring )compares Jack Sparrow to Lee Marvin's character in Cat Ballou.
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And in old Westerns like Rio Bravo and Cat Ballou, the drunken gunslinger could beguile audiences with his stuporous amiability.
Marvin, who was at the height of his career in 1967 (having just come off a Best Actor Oscar win a year earlier for Cat Ballou), accepted the part eagerly.
Credit three people mainly with the film's success: E.M. Nathanson for his novel on which the movie is based (screenplay by Nunnally Johnson and Lukas Heller), Nathanson saying that while it was fiction, he was inspired by legends of such things actually taking place; director Robert Aldrich, an old hand at action thrillers with movies like "Kiss Me Deadly," "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?," "The Flight of the Phoenix," "Emperor of the North," and "The Longest Yard" to his credit; and Lee Marvin, a former Marine riding high as an Oscar winner for "Cat Ballou" two years earlier and "Point Blank" the same year.