Retromendation #2

The week is half through and you can't help but think of the weekend, sitting on your ass and taking it easy. You want to get out there and see Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby but the lines are too long, it's playing some 50 minutes away. You scrap that in favor of walk ing over to the video store and picking up a simple flick and staying in with a beer and whole pizza. That's why you hit the Retromendation to fill your viewing needs and this week the spotlight goes to another ballad worth your while...

The Ballad of Cable Hogue

Cable Hogue is down on his luck and inches from death. Betrayed and left to wander the desert he comes upon an astonishing discovery of water in the ground and after replenishment purchases it in order to put himself in business. As he forms a friendship with a passing reverend and a whore with a heart of gold he waits at his watering hole, biding his time before those who left him for dead return to the land to quench their thirst.

Worthwhile because: Any fan of Jason Robard’s knows no other man can play such a rough crude man of the west with such charm. Cable Hogue isn’t so much different from his character of Cheyenne from Once Upon a Time in the West, though he comes upon better fortune and he is once more faced with the end of the old west, though in a more ham fisted method.

But also because: David Warner, my favorite Englishman as the shady reverend Joshua Sloan who assists Cable in his dealings. Be he consoling to Hogue or as contemptible as they come, this is Warner’s finest 2 hours.

Memorable quote: “I'll live to spit on your grave!”

The Ballad of Cable Hogue is a treat not only for Peckinpah fans but also for anyone who fancies the western genre. It stands out from all of Peckinpah’s filmography for doing away with his usual bag of ultra violent tricks in favor of telling a casually paced film that’s if anything, a tribute to the pioneering spirit of the old west, and it’s inevitable end.