Death and Texas

The War Wagon. Out of the West he jogs, the familiar bleached red shirt and wide-brimmed hat announcing the arrival of John Wayne in his 162nd film. As inevitable as death and Texas, Wayne again plays a hard-nosed, soft-spoken loner--a once-wealthy rancher whose gold-filled land has been stolen in a swindle. Back he comes, seeking revenge with four men foolhardy enough to join him in a scheme to restore his riches: a leathery gunfighter (Kirk Douglas); an outlaw Indian (Howard Keel); an alcoholic kid (Robert Walker) whose favorite mixture is whisky and nitroglycerin; and a wagon-driving double agent (Keenan Wynn) who moonlights for Wayne and sunlights for the other side.

After the customary palaver with friendly Indians and hostile white men, the avengers finally descend on the villains' "war wagon," an armor-plated, heavily guarded stage full of gold dust. With the help of the nitroglycerin and a band of Kiowas, the villains are killed, the wagon pillaged--and the loot lost when runaway horses spill barrels of it over the landscape. At film's end, Wayne salvages sacks worth $100,000 --enough, presumably, to keep him going until his next western.

Derivative as it is, War Wagon moves with surprising force and pace, thanks to Burt Kennedy's taut direction and his cast of old pros. Wayne at 60, and Douglas at 50, can still invest any screenplay with style and gusto. This time they flesh out a standard western with too much gristle and cartilage--but, happily, without an ounce of fat.

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