The rest (the final gun battle) moves this film into its restricted classification. Charley slides a beer mug down a bar counter, sending it into the face of the barkeep. Boss rifle-butts two, knees another, and threatens to kill them all. In retaliation for this act, Boss and Charley track the thugs down. A bloodied Mose spends the night jailed after being roughed up by Baxter’s crew. Battling personal demons from his past, a jumpy Charley hallucinates and winds up pulling a gun on Sue, thinking she’s one of Baxter’s thugs (expensive China gets broken in the process). Violent content: Angry that Button cheated at cards, Charley shoves him off his horse into a stream. One of Baxter’s hired thugs makes a crude comment involving “a 300-pound whore.” Boss longs to someday open a saloon with “dancin’ girls.” Through an open bedroom door, Charley sees Sue getting dressed (she’s clothed in layers of undergarments). On the negative side, very little despite the R rating. Sexual content: On the positive side, Charley refuses Sue’s offer for Boss and himself to spend the night in her spare bedroom, saying it wouldn’t look right. She says, “Best thank God instead!,” to which Boss replies, “We’ll give that a try.” A bartender justifies his intense anger at Charley and Boss with a shout of, “I don’t care if they saved Jesus himself.” When Button comes out of his coma, Sue deflects personal praise for nursing him back to health, noting that God made it happen. Charley then says a few kind words, and admits that he, too, holds a grudge against the Almighty. Boss declines saying he’s mad at that “son of a b-h” (referring to God) for letting this needless death happen. Spiritual content: Following the death of Mose, Charley asks Boss to say a few words at the gravesite. Confronting Baxter a dying Baxter, Boss chastises him for losing his life, “For what? More cows?” Trying to recruit the folk of Harmonville to stand up to Baxter, Charley points out, “There are things that gnaw at a man worse than dying.” When a shopkeeper admits he can’t afford to sample the very expensive Swiss chocolate he sells, Boss gives him a piece of his new purchase. Charley rescues a townperson’s pet dog that has been swept up in flood-like conditions. While Boss accepts the doctor’s kind offer to bandage up Mose for free (both Sue and her brother operate out of a great sense of compassion), the cattleman refuses benevolence a second time when it involves Button (“We pay our way, ma’am”). Mose’s loyalty to Charley is rooted in his boss’s willingness to overlook his large (and un-cowboy like) frame. They respect one another, care for their two employees, and when necessary are willing to sacrifice money, time and even their very lives to do what’s right. Positive elements: While not saints, Charley and Boss operate out of a sense of decency and wild-west honor. But will Charley survive his inevitable showdown with Baxter, seeing that he and Boss are outnumbered a dozen-to-one in this one-horse town? Or will the frightened townspeople finally stand up to Baxter? Charley, who’s really a loner because of secrets he carries from his past, takes a fancy to Sue Barlow, the good doctor’s sister. ![]() The pair also pursue medical care for Button. So when Baxter orders his henchmen to rough up Mose, which in turn leads to Mose’s murder and Button winding up comatose, it’s “justice” Charley and Boss seek. But to nasty rancher Denton Baxter-who controls the cattle industry of the mountain town of Harmonville, as well as the corrupt local sheriff and a band of thugs-this legal practice is still repugnant. Friends and fellow cattlemen Charley Waite and Boss Spearman, along with two hired hands (Mose and Button), freegraze their herds across the open prairies of the new Western frontier.
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