Fantastic!

Brilliant and touching

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

. . . to see the damage repetitive head injuries can have, as it's clear that BIG JAKE was shot out of sequence, beginning with John Wayne knocking out Real Life son Patrick Wayne and pretend son Christopher Mitchum in Mexican Escondero Hotel Room #8 who knows for how many takes. Always a stickler for authenticity, "The Duke" obviously took his stage directions a little too literally here, which is why these two co-stars were virtually unheard of ever again. One only needs to watch the rest of BIG JAKE, filmed AFTER this double tragedy, to see how Pat and Chris seem to be competing for a not-even-invented-yet Razzie Award for Most Wooden Actor in a Supporting Role. John Wayne's "BIG JAKE" character names his dog "Dog," so that viewers won't feel too bad when this thoughtlessly tagged mutt is hacked to death by John Goodfellow's machete. Jake's Native American sidekick is named generically after Uncle Sam, for the exact same reason. As John-the-Machete-Man tries for a bloody Hat Trick by slashing after BIG JAKE's grandson, viewers will be wracking their brains to remember whether Jake named the kid simply "Boy."

Excellent western from Duke's later years. In the early 1900s, Jacob McCandles (John Wayne) sets out to rescue his grandson from kidnappers led by John Fain (Richard Boone). On the journey he gets to know his two grown sons (Patrick Wayne, Christopher Mitchum) he hasn't seen in nearly a decade. This one's lots of fun. Richard Boone makes for a great villain. One of the few villains Duke ever had in his films that seemed close to a match for him. Maureen O'Hara plays Duke's wife in their last movie together. Duke's longtime friend and frequent costar Bruce Cabot is very likable as Sam the Indian. This is one of those "death of the West/old vs new" stories that were all over the place in the '60s and '70s. Not surprisingly, Wayne made some of the best of those. It's a great western with some lighter moments, lots of action, and memorable tough guy lines.

When the grandson of beautiful Maureen O'Hara and her estranged husband John Wayne is kidnapped, Wayne re-appears after being believed by many people other than his wife to be dead. He joins his sons (Bobby Vinton, Patrick Wayne, Christopher Mitchum) to find the nasty gang (lead by Richard Boone) who are holding him hostage out of vengeance. Wayne and sons fight the villains tooth and nail, and Wayne gets to show a sentimental side for both the wife he still loves and the grandson he never knew.The focus may be on the family, but the style is violence. Boone and his men are evil renegades, and Wayne and sons represent old-fashioned goodness. The conflict is there, the heroes all rugged and handsome, and the wasted O'Hara undeniably one of the most beautiful veteran actresses still working in the 1970's. You can't take your eyes off her for her fleeting time on screen, and wish she was there more. The final battle between the two groups goes on far too long, and the situation with Wayne and O'Hara is never resolved, leading the viewer to make their own conclusions. In spite of that, it is hard not to like the film, even if this is one of Wayne's bloodier westerns.

I believe it was the last film I saw in the old Bayshore 5th avenue drive-in (not the bayshore sunrise drive-in). Websites claim the drive-in's last season was 1964, but to those that remember it closed much later. I think during or after that summer (1971)when the screen was torn in half by a tree after a storm. Either way, this film was a good old-fashioned western that came out in a time when westerns became revisionist garbage ("Doc"), or had political undertones that paralleled the view of some on the Vietnam war (Ulzana's raid, soldier blue, pat garrett and billy the kid)- not to say these were bad films, but it was the direction many films were going at that time. "Big Jake" made a statement about the changing times and how certain old tried-and-true methods were tried-and-true for a reason. Wayne knew full well what he was doing; his popularity was so for many reasons, one of which was tried-and-true movie-making. Good was good, bad was bad and people just wanted to sit back and enjoy rooting for the hero. This is not to say he didn't make westerns with gray areas, but when he did it was more a case in character study than political statements for the purpose of revision.