“At the end of the day, why do people join circuses? It was to start over, right? Wipe the slate clean. That’s ultimately what all of these characters represent, but there’s really not much more to this film than that.”
Bronco Billy was a Western comedy-drama film released in 1980, directed by Clint Eastwood, written by Dennis Hackin, and starring Clint Eastwood as Bronco Billy McCoy, alongside Sondra Locke as Antoinette Lily, Geoffrey Lewis as John Arlington, and Scatman Crothers as Doc Lynch.
The story essentially follows Clint Eastwood as the titular Bronco Billy, the host of a crappy traveling cowboy show where he rides around on a horse and shoots targets while blindfolded, all while hemorrhaging funds. His traveling roadshow is beginning to tank. He eventually runs into the rich and snooty Antoinette Lily, whom he takes on the road as his new assistant. This strange, ragtag team of misfits then goes on the adventure of a lifetime, embracing their weird, quirky, but wholesome dream of living out the cowboy fantasy.
Moving right along on my Clint Eastwood watch-a-thon journey, we have crossed into the ‘80s... the land and the decade of the strange, and Bronco Billy is no exception. This film is... odd. What we have here is a contemporary Western, so it’s not the usual setup you get with Eastwood and cowboys in the Old West. Technically, this is set in the modern day... well, 40 years ago, but still... and you have Eastwood and his group acting essentially as a traveling circus... and that’s the movie.
I mean, at the end of the day, why do we join circuses? At least, what was the excuse people made to join circuses back when that was popular? It was to start over, right? Start anew, wipe the slate clean. It was about how our lives prior to the circus are irrelevant, how the past is the past, and how important following your dreams ultimately is. That’s what all of these characters represent, especially Sondra Locke, and it’s about finding a family in these weirdos who just kind of do what they want to do.
There’s really not much more to this film than that. I have no idea how it is nearly two hours long when there’s very little substance to be found. The whole thing actually feels five hours long because it is so repetitive and... dare I say... boring. I also have no idea how or why Clint Eastwood made this thing, nor why he chose to star in it. There are so many choices going on here that baffle me beyond belief. Are the performances bad? No, but they are definitely very average and forgettable. Is the story good at least? No, the story and direction are kind of aimless overall. This was a story that makes more sense as a short film than a full-length feature, let alone a two-hour one.
I almost want to say they made the movie because Sondra Locke wanted to make it. After all, she’s even publicly stated this was the favorite film that she and Eastwood made together. At the time, they were in the middle of a heated affair... one of Eastwood’s many affairs. The dude was an unapologetic serial cheater, I’ve come to learn.
But yeah, at the end of the day, I really don’t have much to say about the movie. For the most part, I felt disinterested in it right from the get-go. I didn’t care about the characters, and I didn’t feel as if they had enough depth or development. I feel like it wanted to be a lighter film that made some tongue-in-cheek jokes about Eastwood’s own career... like if The Gauntlet was making fun of his tough-guy cop movies, Bronco Billy was making fun of his tough-guy cowboy movies. But it wasn’t as interesting as The Gauntlet, which, by the way, I didn’t think was all that fantastic of a movie either.
This is just a lose-lose type of film. I knew at some point the other shoe would drop with Eastwood and I’d eventually run into some movies I wasn’t a big fan of, but I am surprised to see one this early in his career.
Unbiased/Technical Score: 20/50 (40%)
Biased/Entertainment Score: 19/50 (38%)
Total Combined Score: 39/100 (39% or 2/5 on Letterboxd)