The War Wagon

Plot synopsis:
Rancher Taw Jackson (John Wayne) returns to his hometown to settle a score. Three years earlier, he was framed by corrupt businessman Frank Pierce (Bruce Cabot) and wrongfully imprisoned. Pierce confiscates Jackson's land, where he discovers gold. After his prison sentence was cut short for good behavior, Jackson returns to steal a shipment of gold from Pierce. He hires Lomax (Kirk Douglas) to assist him, even though he had worked as a hired gun for Pierce and was instrumental in sending him to prison. Jackson needs Lomax not only because of his marksmanship, but also because he is a safe-cracker. The gold shipment is being transported in a "war wagon," a heavily armored stagecoach armed with a deadly Gatling gun in a top-mounted steerable turret. Jackson and Lomax assemble a gang and plan to rob the war wagon at the weakest point in the route it travels.
Things do not quite work out as planned. Pierce dies in a shootout with one of his own men trying to escape from the war wagon. The wagon crashes into a ravine, Lomax opens the safe, and the men move the gold into a separate wagon. Before they can haul it away, however, a group of Kiowas try to take it from them. During the ensuing gunfight, the horses are spooked and run away with the wagon, and most of the gold is lost as a result. Nevertheless, Taw manages to recover a portion of it, and they agree to meet in six months to divide it, since "it wouldn't be very smart to flash gold around after a robbery".

Tags: good versus evil, revenge, violence

Review:
But, make it an old time western, then cast John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Bruce Cabot, Bruce Dern, Keenan Wynn and Howard Keel as a Jewish Indian and you have the makings of a classic.The War Wagon, complete with catchy title tune, is another notch in the Duke's gun for being dead on target for what his fans crave: A solid, stoic hero, framed, robbed of all his possessions and jailed by an evil banker (Cabot), he is released and vows revenge by stealing his regular gold dust shipment.
Throw in Kirk Douglas as an old friend who's been hired to kill him, a drunken, shaky nitro expert, played by the ever pre-pubescent looking Robert Walker Jr., a half Jewish/Half-Indian compadre (Howard Keel), a bitter, miserly thief (Keenan Wynn), his young, enslaved wife (a luminescent Joanna Barnes, also a "Spartacus" alumni)), toss in typical Western scum like Bruce Dern, and you have a high adventure caper flick that will keep you entertained for the length of the picture.The on-screen magic of Wayne and Douglas is never in better form than here, with all the usual hijinks the stars can pack into this epitome of the Saturday Matinee Action movie before they became techo-terrors of dueling visual effects..
Granted the comedy isn't exactly highbrow like the other two films, still the War Wagon is an honorable addition to that genre.Helping Wayne along in his enterprise are Kirk Douglas a gunfighter/ safe-cracker, Howard Keel a cynical Indian, Robert Walker, Jr. a young alcoholic explosives expert and Keenan Wynn an old codger who works for Bruce Cabot and is essentially their inside man.Kirk Douglas in his memoirs The Ragman's Son held the Duke in enormous respect even though their political views differed radically.
I won't say what the plan is on how the War Wagon is dealt with, but anyone who has watched the George Marshall/Glenn Ford film, Imitation General, will have some idea.A good entertaining John Wayne western which is as good as it gets..
In addition, up to this point John Wayne films had given the Western genre only very traditional treatments.But "The War Wagon" was only the first example of director Burt Kennedy's tweaking of the genre.
Taw (John Wayne) recruits an old enemy Lomax (Kirk Douglas) as he seeks revenge on a ruthless mine owner (Bruce Cabot) who not only framed and sent to him prison, but appropriated his ranch and personal possessions after a huge gold strike was discovered on ranch property (here we go with the exaggeration-the only things missing are stealing Taw's wife, adopting his children, and leaving his toilet seat up).
Cabot transports his gold in a "Wild Wild West" inspired armored wagon.The interplay between Wayne and Douglas (who always seems right on the verge of accepting Cabot's standing offer of $12,000 to kill Wayne) is clever and sarcastic, working with the many exaggerated elements to provide the film's considerable humor.
Solid entertainment in the Wayne style, as John and Kirk team up to liberate a gazillion bars of gold from Bruce Cabot, the man who stole Wayne's ranch and goldmine.
The very appealing storyline concerns Taw Jackson, played ably by John Wayne, who returns from prison to get back what he can from Bruce Cabot, who stole his ranch and framed him.
All he can do is to recruit a group of "mission fighters", beginning with the man who had shot him 5 years earlier, Lomax, played by dynamic Kirk Douglas-and raid the "war wagon"--his enemy's vehicle for transporting gold, a Gatling-Gun-equipped armored stagecoach.
Taw's team includes a drunken young dynamite expert he met in prison Robert Walker Jr., Keenan Wynn who is insanely jealous of his young wife, Valora Noland as the wife, Levi Walking Bear in the charismatic person of Howard Keel, his liaison to needed Indian allies, and more.
Adding fuel to the fire is that the Wagon is run by a man called Frank Pierce (Bruce Cabot), who stole Taw Jackson's (Wayne) ranch as he "cough-cough" served time in jail.
Further upping the intrigue is that Pierce wants to hire known gunman Lomax (Douglas) to kill Jackson, oblivious that the two men are plotting to rob him.If that all sounds like a caper movie then you would be right, because it is, and a splendid one at that.
Support comes in the form of Howard Keel (a humorous turn as Indian Levi Walking Bear), Robert Walker Jr, Keenan Wynn, Valora Noland and look out for Bruce Dern in a short but effective role.
Wayne then assembles a band to support him , including an impulsive , wise-cracking young (Robert Walker) , a dumb renegade Indian (Howard Keel) , an old man (Keenan Wynn) accompanied by a young girl , and , and of course , the fastest gun in the West , Kirk Douglas , as the hired hand sent by the ambitious owner who framed him to kill him .
Thrilling and well-written Western with lots of action dealing with an amusing caper in which Wayne has a twisted as well as moving plan : to rob the gold being shipped in an armor-plated stagecoach , ¨The war Wagon¨.
Support cast is frankly excellent as Howard Keel , bizarrely cast as an ironic Redskin , Robert walker as a brave, stubborn young gunslinger , the beautiful Joanna Barnes ; add a succulent cast of villains that include Bruce Dern , Emilio Fernández , Gene Evans , Terry Wilson and a great secondary : Bruce Cabot , John Ford and Wayne's usual .
While you might think the film will end in a pretty predictable and conventional way, the way it's handled makes the film worth sticking with to the conclusion.This is a decent but not particularly outstanding John Wayne and Kirk Douglas Western.
Sure, it might not be perfect, but when it's good, it's so good a viewer has to grant it an "excellent" rating.Shucks, when people like Bruce Dern and Gene Evans and Sheb Wooley are "withs," then you know there is a great cast.Burt Kennedy created one of his best productions, with exciting camera angles and those great performances.Dimitri Tiomkin has composed better music, but his score here fits and adds another admirable layer.The levels of characterization, the layers of plot, and relationships of the characters and groups all work together to form a thoroughly entertaining whole..
John Wayne and Kirk Douglas, both big stars of the period, team up in THE WAR WAGON to steal $500,000 in gold and wreak revenge on a nasty land baron (Bruce Cabot) who has stolen Wayne's ranch while Wayne was in prison.
He assembles a team consisting of gunman/safe-cracker Kirk Douglas (the man who shot him!), drunken explosives expert Robert Walker Jr., sardonic Indian Howard Keel, and crazy old Keenan Wynn in order to take Cabot's iron-clad monstrosity and it's $500,000 cargo.Fast, funny, and full of action, The War Wagon is incredible entertainment.
Wayne and Douglas are in fine form and make quite a team, heading a great, colorful cast.Director Burt Kennedy does a fine job of keeping the action rolling along nicely and the unpretentious, tongue-in-cheek script by Clair Huffaker has just the right amount of comedy without letting things turn silly.
This movie begins with a cowboy named "Taw Jackson" (John Wayne) having been just released from prison and riding into the town of Emmett, New Mexico to report to the local sheriff.
Concerned that Taw Jackson might be back to even the score Pierce sends two of his hired hands to ride out and find a gunman named "Lomax" (Kirk Douglas) to kill him once and for all.
John Wayne & Kirk Douglas are playing themselves with out any thought of who & what their characters are supposed to be,.There are many actors from the fifties in this, such as Keenan Wynn, & Robert Walker Jr & Bruce Cabot (who was in the original King Kong)/.The best part of the film was the beautiful scenery & the cinematography was first rate.
The duke and Kirk Douglas are bitter enemies, who strike up an uneasy alliance against Bruce Cabot, a land baron who for some reason has a war wagon full of gold.
Playing to the barrel- chested strengths of Golden Age superstars John Wayne and Kirk Douglas, the film goes about its business with a lack of fuss, packing in everything from chaotic saloon brawls, quick-draws and comedy-tinged bickering between its two towering stars, before climaxing with an exciting little set-piece involving the armoured beast of the title.
The final piece of the puzzle is skilled gun-for-hire Lomax (Douglas), the man who played a key role in sending Taw to prison years earlier while in the employ of Pierce.
Lomax was the man who shot him but this time Jackson offers Lomax $100k to rob a gold shipment on Pierce's War Wagon, an armored stage coach.
Taw rounds up a few associates to participate in the heist: wise guy Indian Levi Walking Bear (Howard Keel), alcoholic young explosives expert Billy Hyatt (Robert Walker Jr.), transporter Wes Fletcher (Keenan Wynn), and a man named Lomax (Douglas), a gunslinger who Pierce wants to hire to kill Taw.Clair Huffaker wrote the screenplay, based on his own novel, and director Burt Kennedy, a man who often specialized in Westerns with strong comedy content, does a fine job of bringing it to life.
Released in 1967 and directed by Burt Kennedy, "The War Wagon" is a Western starring John Wayne and Kirk Douglas as Taw and Lomax.
While Taw enlists Lomax to heist half a million in gold from Pierce's "War Wagon," an armored stage coach with a Gatling gun on top, Pierce also hires Lomax to assassinate Taw. The other members of the heist team are Howard Keel as a Native who has learned the white man's ways, Robert Walker Jr. as a young drunkard who's skilled in explosives, and Keenan Wynn as a curmudgeon who plays on both teams.
But with THE WAR WAGON, Wayne slyly tweaked his tried and true image and made one of the most unique films of his career.First and foremost,Wayne's Taw Jackson is most certainly not a righteous upholder of law and order, instead he has just gotten out of prison early on a trumped up charge and determined to get some payback on the man who framed him and stole Jackson's ranch (and the gold on said land) out from under him.
For one of the few times ever, Wayne plays a character quite comfortable working outside the law, mainly because the law has become nothing more than the corrupt tool of Pierce (Bruce Cabot)the tin pot tyrant who is getting rich on Jackson's gold- transporting it in an armor plated stagecoach, refitted with a wicked looking Gatling gun and accompanied on the road by a large armed posse.
It's Jackson's plan to take down Pierce's self named War Wagon and make off with a fortune; but of course he'll need some help and this is where the movie becomes a mashup of the western and heist genres, the one where a group of disparate individuals come together, pool their talents and take on a dangerous mission.
Jackson't team comes to include Robert Walker Jr. as a teenage explosives expert with weakness for drink; Howard Keel as Levi Walking Bear, an Indian who knows the ways of the white man ("grab all you can, while you can."); Keenan Wynn as a foul tempered teamster who works for Pierce and who drags his child bride (whom he bought) with him everywhere so he can keep an eye on her.
The interplay between Lomax and Jackson, especially their dialog, is one of the great strength's of the film and it's a good example of how Wayne was not afraid to share the screen with actors of Douglas's caliber, who were every bit as charismatic as himself; how having a strong personality to play off only made them both look better.
Director Burt Kennedy was able to strike the right balance between action and humor, he would go on to direct SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL GUNFIGHTER, one of my favorites; Kennedy and his crew got some great location shots in Durango, Mexico, the same place Sam Peckinpah would shoot PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID a few years later.With the possible exceptions of Paul Newman and Steve McQueen, John Wayne was the biggest male movie star of the turbulent 1960's, and THE WAR WAGON, with its great opening credit theme song, was one of the chief reasons why this was true.
John Wayne is Taw Jackson, a man wronged by the bad guy, played by Bruce Cabot, and sent to prison.
Made at the tail-end of American cinema's great Western era, 'The War Wagon' combines action and dark comedy in what is very much an homage to the grand tradition that Wayne, in particular, was an integral part of.Wayne, in his 162nd film appearance, plays Taw Jackson, a New Mexico rancher who has been released from prison after serving three years of his term.
He hires a dependable gunman (Lomax, played by Douglas), a drunk explosives expert (Billy Hyatt, Robert Walker Jr. of 'The Ceremony'), a paranoid horse driver (Wes Fletcher, Keenan Wynn of 'Shoot, Gringo...Shoot!'), and an Indian who has assimilated to the White ways of doing business (Levi Walking Bear, 'Dallas' regular Howard Keel).'The War Wagon' offers a few engaging subplots, including the absence of loyalty from Lomax, who already shot Taw years earlier and has been offered a fair sum by Pierce to finish the job.
As a matter of fact, while Douglas was a much more versatile actor than his co-star, he did his fair share of Westerns himself over a period of 30 years  from Raoul Walsh's ALONG THE GREAT DIVIDE (1951) to the Australian production THE MAN FROM SNOWY RIVER (1982)  and which include such notable examples as THE BIG SKY (1952), GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL (1957), LAST TRAIN FROM GUN HILL (1959), LONELY ARE THE BRAVE (1962) and POSSE (1975), in which Douglas directed himself and another co-star from the film under review (Bruce Dern).Apart from the two Hollywood legends, THE WAR WAGON features a good cast of character actors  Howard Keel (amusing as an Indian crony of Wayne's), Keenan Wynn (as the most ill-tempered member of the gang), Wayne regular Bruce Cabot (as a villainous tycoon) and Gene Evans (as a corrupt deputy); among the younger actors, then, we find Robert Walker Jr.
War Wagon is one of John Wayne's late period westerns, when he was churning them out according to formula while he was still relatively close to being the world's top box office draw.It is essentially a wild west caper movie - bags of colourful scenery, action, a jocular script, and some decent on-screen chemistry between Wayne and co-star Kirk Douglas.
Slowly they form a plan and prepare to rob Pierce's armored and armed wagon, in which he transports his gold.Comments: As mentioned, this is a classical western with John Wayne and Kirk Douglas starring.
I still vividly remember watching the "War Wagon" trailer in the movie theater when I was 11 years old.Very unusual Chinese themed saloon/whorehouse owned by Lomax, Douglas' character.
The Taw Jackson character played by the Legendary John Wayne wants revenge on Frank Pierce for stealing his gold and ranch and sending him to prison.Here is yet another Moon 168 Readback: "If Foreigners ramp Diplomacys holdout deep Ark men stories Comp." Anybody remember the two friends in a Department store after civilizations regrettable collapse in a comic book?
"Return of the Seven" director Burt Kennedy helmed the most imaginative John Wayne western of the 1960s with "The War Wagon." This improbable but entertaining horse opera co-starred a trim Kirk Douglas at his acrobatic best as well as Howard Keel, Bruce Cabot, and Robert Walker Jr. Novelist Claire Huffaker adapted the screenplay from his novel and remains faithful to it for the most part.
It's a fun film with a simple but engaging plot.The movie begins with Wayne been released from prison after been framed by a ruthless miner played by Bruce Cabot, who has taken his land away and Wayne wants revenge by robbing him of his gold which is been transported in an armour plated horse carriage.
He forms a mismatched group of desperadoes - Kirk Douglas (a gunslinging safe cracker), Howard Keel (a conniving Indian), an alcoholic explosives expert and a greedy "inside" man.It's amusing to see Wayne on the wrong side of the law for a change and that's just one of the surprising aspects of the film.
They don't make movies like The War Wagon anymoreand that's both a bad and a good thing.The movie follows Taw Jackson (John Wayne), a rancher run off his land and framed for a crime that has just been paroled and is returning home with a plan for a profitable revenge on Pierce (Bruce Cabot), the man who stole his land and nearly got him killed.
Pierce has become rich mining gold out of Jackson's land, so Taw recruits 4 men, including Lomax (Kirk Douglas) - the man Pierce hired to kill him - to ambush the armored wagon Pierce uses to transport the gold.Wayne and Douglas are both as good as you could imagine, giving the sort of movie star performances you rarely see nowadays.
Add in their compatriots – self-loathing Indian Levi Walkingbear (Howard Keel), teenage drunk and explosives expert Billy Hyatt (Robert Walker) and Wes Fletcher, an angry, thieving version of the bearded old coot Keenan Wynn played in many a Western, and you've got a fun gang of characters looking to split half a million dollars in gold.Like most old school Westerns, The War Wagon isn't a particularly complex or fancy story.
THE WAR WAGON is a 1967 western directed by Burt Kennedy and starring no less than two of the all-time Hollywood greats, John Wayne and Kirk Douglas.