The Jack Bull

Colour, 35 mm
USA, 1999, 120 min
IP – International premiere
Section: Special Events

Synopsis

Ever since Sam Peckinpah shot The Wild Bunch, the number of worthwhile cinematic explorations into American ‘mythology’ (read western) has been fewer than the number of rounds in a six-gun. Like Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller and Eastwood’s Unforgiven, John Badham’s western Jack Bull won’t forever remain in the shadows. It tells the story (little-known in these parts, regrettably) of a time when Wyoming still wasn’t a state. John Cusack portrays a rancher named Myrl Redding who gets into conflict with wealthy landowner Henry Ballard, played by western screen legend L.Q. Jones. The latter, whose career includes five Peckinpah films, takes the role of an influential and unscrupulous man who draws the proud though ever-honourable Redding into trouble. The screenwriter, Cusack’s father Dick, based his script on Heinrich von Kleist’s 1810 novella Michael Kohlhaas.

About the director

John Badham (b. 1939, Luton, Bedfordshire, United Kingdom) is the son of an English actress and an American general. He grew up in Alabama and studied at Yale. He prepared for his feature debut, The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976) with years of practice directing and producing for television. The following year he came out with the box-office smash Saturday Night Fever. Two adaptations of Broadway plays earned him accolades: Dracula (1979), with Frank Langella and Laurence Olivier, and Whose Life Is It Anyway? (1981). Badham enjoyed further success at the box office with War Games (1983) and Stakeout (1987). He currently lectures at the American Film Institute and Yale University.