The Great Bull Robbery: ‘Rancho Deluxe’ Reviewed
by Rachel Bellwoar
The Wild West has bred a lot of outlaws over the years, but none as amateur yet successful as Jack (The Big Lebowski’s Jeff Bridges) and Cecil (Law & Order’s Sam Waterston) in Frank Perry’s Rancho Deluxe. Jack and Cecil are cattle rustlers. That means they sneak onto ranches and shoot cattle that doesn’t belong to them in order to sell the meat. Whether their operation is reflective of how most cattle rustlers do business, there isn’t a lot of planning that goes into Jack and Cecil’s jobs, yet they never get caught, and the jobs keep getting bigger and bigger.
It’s like screenwriter, Thomas McGuane, watched a bunch of heist movies where the criminals thought of every possible contingency and still got caught and decided to write the complete opposite. Early in the movie Jack and Cecil steal a prized bull and decide to hold it for ransom. It’s the kind of storyline you could base a whole movie around – what goes wrong, the unexpected problems. This is a huge, blue ribbon animal. Surely that would attract some attention, yet in Rancho Deluxe it’s like ‘ok, what’s next?’ A crime that would cause anyone else to lose sleep is over and done with in the blink of an eye.
It’s a tone that, admittedly, takes some getting used to. Especially after being programmed by movies to expect the perfect plan, Jack and Cecil are a very different kind of criminal. They aren’t thrill seekers, yet they keep raising the risk, which would then seem to indicate that they need money, but that’s not it either. In the end the only explanation Rancho Deluxe has to offer is there was nothing better to do.
Boredom is the prime motivator for all of the characters in the movie, including John Brown (Clifton James), the ranch owner whose cattle Jack and Cecil are stealing. Fun City Editions’ Blu-Ray includes some scenes that were only included on the TV version of the movie and in one scene Brown’s wife, Cora (Elisabeth Ashley) asks her husband why he’s so eager to catch the rustlers when catching them would mean an end to the excitement.
Ashley (who’s recent appeared on show like Russian Doll and Treme) is just one member of this film’s incredible supporting cast. Others include Harry Dean Stanton, who memorably plays Pong with Jack in one scene (in a new interview Bridges confirms they were really playing Pong while delivering their lines), and Slim Pickens, who plays the stock detective Brown hires to find the rustlers yet who’s apathy about the case is hilarious (especially when he gives a speech about being woken up from a good dream).
The casting of Waterston as Native American wouldn’t go over today (in his commentary film critic and historian, Nick Pinkerton, brings up the preliminary cast list and it’s apparent there was never any thought of casting an actor who was really Native American), but the film does paint a very interesting portrait of what it means to be rich, in terms of Brown’s lack of authority and the nonchalance Jack and Cecil have about money.
Besides the joyful interview with Bridges, where he talks about meeting his wife on set, Fun City Edition’s Blu-Ray includes a new interview with McGuane and a booklet essay by Gavin Smith, where he points out some of the “incongruities” in the movie that are easy to miss on a first viewing.
Rancho Deluxe is available on Blu-Ray now from Fun City Editions.
