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Strange, Small & Forgotten Films: Bad Company (1972)

June 25, 2010 in Film | Permalink

Jeff Bridges, only 23 when this movie was released, would somehow not win his first Oscar for 38 more years.

An under-the-radar 1972 Western bursting at the seams with young talent, Robert Benton’s Civil War picaresque, Bad Company, never got the attention it richly deserved. Considering the year it was made and the fact that it revolved around a group of draft dodgers, you would think it would have had a natural entree into the youth market. But Benton’s film is no thinly disguised Vietnam parable; it loyally sets out to tell a story of the miseducation of a young man in a specific time and place and does so wonderfully well.

Drew Dixon (Barry Brown) is a well-raised Methodist boy from Ohio whose older brother has already perished fighting for the Union Army. His parents can’t bear another loss, so they hide him until he can head out for Virginia City, which is beyond the reach of the Union. On the road, Drew is coldcocked and rolled almost immediately by a rogue named Jake Rumsey (Jeff Bridges). While trying to get back his money, Drew falls in with Jake’s rough-edged crew and they traverse miles and miles of the untamed land, alternately playing the role of prey and predator.

Co-star Barry Brown (right) committed suicide in his Los Angeles home in 1978.

Drew fights with all his might to maintain his morals in a world that cares little for such niceties, but he comes to realize that there may be something deep inside of him that is just as wild as the West. Benton investigates this tendency in his young protagonist with relentless energy, right down to the film’s perfectly calibrated and fluid ending. (Available from Netflix and other outlets.)

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