Will Penny

Is this really going to be a western that tells it like it was? Will Penny starts out that way. The opening scenes of cowboys working in the Old West depict them as a sordid rabble of exploited riffraff with a uniformly low opinion of themselves. Is the film really going to show that Charlton Heston can act as well as perform? At the start, he is completely convincing as Cowboy Will Penny--illiterate, aging, and anything but bright. He doesn't even have a heart of gold; Gary Cooper would never have left a wounded pal to bleed his life away in a wagon outside while he loaded up on rotgut in a saloon. That's what Will Penny does, sitting there, scruffy and stupid, upending the bottle and croaking, "Sure burns a dollar's worth." It looks as if this is going to be an interesting experiment in antiheroics amid the great open spaces.

Then the film changes bosses in mid-screen and Will Penny turns standard after all: Civilized Woman Tames Frontier Man. The formula female (prettily played by Joan Hackett) has a formula little boy, and the threesome winsomely provide the formula scenes--the nursing-his-wounds idyl, the making-him-take-a-bath episode, the surrogate father bit. It is an immense relief when Donald Pleasence turns up as the maniac bad guy with an interest in rape and torture.

Charlton Heston, of course, does what is expected of him. The pity is that he has to; he was so good when he was bad.

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