The Cowboys (1972)
Directed by Mark Rydell
When his cattlemen abandon him for the gold fields, rancher Wil Andersen is forced to take on a collection of young boys as his cowboys in order to get his herd to market in time to avoid financial disaster. The boys learn to do a man's job under Andersen's tutelage, however, neither he nor the boys know that a gang of cattle thieves is stalking them.
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What critics compared The Cowboys to
He’s our John Wayne, and if The Magnificent Seven isn’t quite The Searchers or True Grit , well, it’s at least The Cowboys or Chisum .
There is real nostalgia in seeing a silver-haired Harrison Ford as the colonel in charge of training children to take his place (done better, this could have been his "The Cowboys").
Movies like Lord of the Flies (1963), Walkabout (1971), Bless the Beasts & Children (1971), The Bad News Bears (1976), The Cowboys (1972), The Squid and the Whale (2005), Kids (1995), and Pretty Baby (1978) all had a part in pushing the boundaries on how the portrayal of children is seen on film.
The co-stars are a colorful and varied lot: veteran star Sterling Hayden, who replaced the late Dan Blocker in the part of a washed-up writer; Nina van Pallandt, the Danish-born singer who was involved in the Clifford Irving-Howard Hughes affair, here making a promising U.S. film debut; ex-Yankee pitcher Jim Bouton, now a TV sportscaster in New York; actor-director Mark Rydell, who recently directed John Wayne in "The Cowboys"; ex-"Laugh-In" regular Hebry Gibson; David Arkin, Warren Berlinger and, in a cameo, David Carradine.