The Rounders

Glenn Ford and Henry Fonda star as Ben Jones and Marion “Howdy” Lewis—itinerant horse wrangler buddies on a modern Texas ranch—in this 1965 contemporary Western adapted from the titular 1960 novel by Max Evans. Ben (Ford) is the planner, constantly broke but hoping to earn enough money to open a bar in Hawaii, and he makes a deal to break a string of horses for scheming rancher Jim Ed Love (Chill Wills), who invariably rooks Ben and Howdy into work season after season. The episodic narrative follows a year in the life of these aging cowpokes as they head into the backcountry for the winter and round up strays in the spring. The pair have a kind of romance going with the daughters (Joan Freeman and Kathleen Freeman) of a local farmer, and they enjoy a fling with two showgirls (Sue Ane Langdon and Hope Holiday), all the while battling a headstrong horse that refuses to be broken. Director Burt Kennedy is a veteran filmmaker with a knack for comic Westerns (he made Support Your Local Sheriff! a few years later), but this is not so much a spoof as it is a buddy film with a rollicking sense of humor, an innocent kind of sexiness, and a matter-of-fact presentation of the physically demanding day-to-day minutiae of being a working cowboy on a cattle ranch. The gentle humor and low-key performances by Ford and Fonda has long made it a favorite among Western fans. Making its Blu-ray debut, this is recommended. (S. Axmaker)