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Junior Bonner
A promotional film poster for Junior Bonner.
Directed by	Sam Peckinpah
Produced by	Joe Wizan
Written by	Jeb Rosebrook
Starring	Steve McQueen Robert Preston Ida Lupino Ben Johnson
Music by	Jerry Fielding
Cinematography	Lucien Ballard
Editing by	Frank Santillo Robert L. Wolfe
Distributed by	MGM
Release date(s)	August 2, 1972 (USA)
Running time	100 min.
Country	USA
Language	English
IMDb profile

Junior Bonner is a melodrama and contemporary western movie released in 1972, focusing on the relationships between two brothers and their father. It is sometimes considered the warmest and most humanist of director Sam Peckinpah's films.

The central character, 'Junior' (Steve McQueen), is a rodeo rider who is just 'over the hill'; in the opening credits sequence we see him taping up his injuries just after an unsuccessful ride on an ornery bull named Sunshine. He returns home to Prescott, Arizona for the Independence Day parade and rodeo. He arrives to find the family home being bulldozed by his younger brother Curly (Joe Don Baker), the entrepreneur and real-estate developer, building ranch homes. His womanizing, good-for-nothing father Ace (Robert Preston) and down-to-earth, long-suffering mother Elvira (Ida Lupino) are estranged. Ace wants to emigrate to Australia to rear sheep and mine gold, so he attempts to obtain financing from Junior. Junior bribes rodeo owner Buck Roan (Ben Johnson) to let him ride Sunshine again, promising him half the prize money; and Junior actually manages to pull it off this time, going the full 8 seconds on the bull. His final action in the film is to walk into a travel agent's and buy his father a one-way ticket to Australia – first-class, rather than economy class (thus spending all the prize money rather than saving enough to pay Buck the bribe).

The story explores Peckinpah's favorite theme--the end of honor and the arrival of modern capitalism in the West. In a memorable scene, Ace and Junior escape from the parade on Junior's horse, ending up at the deserted railway station, where they drink and despair at the state of the world and their indigency.

The film has enjoyed somewhat of a second popularity in the mid-2000s, perhaps because its predictions regarding capitalist development seem to have come true in the years since. The story of Curly Bonner seems far more relevant today than it did in the early 1970s.

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