While Wayne has always been Duke to his friends, he is Big John to publicists and so it is not surprising that the title of the film should have been changed before release from Million Dollar Kidnapping, hardly suggestive of a Western (although an accurate summary of the plot situation), to Big Jake, centering fair and square on the main character of the film and approximating its performer's popular nickname. The film has a couple of pleasant reunions: Maureen O'Hara again, and George Sherman as the director, the man who directed Wayne in all of his 3 Mesquiteers adventures in the late 1930s and popped up subsequently as the producer of The Comancheros. Sherman's direction is easy on the eye though rather too slack to make the most of the opening and climactic scenes, and William Clothier takes yet another opportunity to enhance a Wayne film with some splendid views.
The time is 1909. The East is watching The Great Train Robbery and its successors, but the West is still the West playing the games for real and proving more-than a match for the trappings of Twentieth century progress. Wayne's Jake McCandles is, like his George Washington McLintock of McLintock! (1963), a man with a town named after him (the railways stations look suspiciously similar in both films), the pioneer who built the biggest spread around. But he is an absentee from McCandles and his wife Martha (Maureen O'Hara) who does live there insists that she has no husband - until she needs him. It's never made clear whether he deserted her or was booted out but there's talk of Martha's past resentment at his interest in other women. One day a band of vicious outlaws led by John Fain (Richard Boone) ride up to the McCandles ranchhouse, coldbloodedly murder ten people, abduct Martha's eight-year-old grandson, Little Jake (John Ethan Wayne), and leave a ransom note demanding one million dollars. Martha has no problem raising the money but she declines the help of the Texas Rangers and the military in delivering it. This, she declares, is .."going to be an extremely harsh and unpleasant kind of business and will require an extremely harsh and unpleasant kind of man to see to it!"
On this splendid introduction, the film cuts to a giant close-up of Wayne's eye squinting down the barrel of his rifle. He is about to break up a small lynching party down below, thinks better of it (muttering to his dog, called Dog, "No, sir, I ain't"), then thinks again when he sees one of the lynchers kick a small boy trying to rescue the sheepherder from the noose. Wayne rides up to the hanging tree looking dangerously amiable, agreeing most readily that sheep bring a terrible odor to the land, but buying the herd from their unfortunate owner and transferring the cowboys' grievances to himself. He has only to mention his name for the men to back down from their threatening stance and hastily release their victim. "I thought you were dead," their leader (Jim Davis) comments. This little good deed accomplished, Wayne gets the message from Martha, puts on his best clothes and turns up at McCandles station where she is waiting. "You're as young, as lovely as ever," Wayne tells her, always ready with a warm compliment for his screen reunions with wives. He also shows his deep attachment to her by knowing to the year and month (if not the day) how long it has been since he saw her last (a familiar device from earlier films with the same situation). O'Hara's Martha is as headstrong as one would expect, assuring Wayne that their son (shot in Fain's raid) will recover because "I would not contemplate otherwise." He agrees to deliver the ransom money after learning for the first time that he even has a grandson. She decides to let the Texas Rangers try and ambush the kidnappers but Wayne prefers to deal with them alone, allowing her to accuse him of being as stubborn as ever, of not having changed. "Not a bit," he readily agrees, and once again we see the two players refusing to bend to each other. Though Martha never reappears in the picture once Wayne has set out on his mission, the small part is so effectively conceived that it gets the film off to a bright start and is a worthwhile addition to O'Hara's line of appearances opposite Wayne.
Wayne displays his undiminished capabilities by singlehandedly carrying off the chest of ransom money that two men have lugged in, but he is eventually joined by his two sons, James (Patrick Wayne) and Michael (Chris Mitchum), as well as by an old Indian friend, Sam Sharpnose (Bruce Cabot). There is a lot of the usual horseplay between father and sons, Wayne socking each of them at least a couple of times; there is also a scene where Wayne specially seeks out the orneriest man in a town to start a brawl as a cover for a scheme elsewhere. Fain rides into Wayne's camp one night to conduct an edgy conversation with him, neither revealing their true identities but making their positions clear, and they finally meet at a "trade" to set beside those in the Hawks films. Wayne hands over the ransom chest and allows Fain to discover that it merely contains ordinary paper, then sotto voce warns the man that he'll be dead the moment he allows one of his sharpshooters to pick off Wayne's waiting grandson. A moment of stalemate is succeeded by a bloody shootout in which Wayne is hit at least twice, his Indian friend and dog killed, and his grandson (played by Wayne's youngest real-life son) has to fire a bullet from a derringer into the largest member of Fain's gang. Here, as in the opening raid on the ranchhouse, each little incident tends to be handled in isolation, dissipating tension: when the small boy helps put a tourniquet on Wayne's bleeding leg, there is no sound of continuing gunfire elsewhere with the rest of Wayne's team to keep up the suspense. The brutality, too, seems somewhat excessive - the most violent climax in a Wayne film to this point, and a regrettable genuflection towards trends in Westerns generally.
The most interesting aspect of the film is the contrast between progress and traditional ways - with the latter, as expressed in Wayne, winning hands down. Texas Rangers set out in their motorized convoy with all the confidence of the Twentieth century, steaming across a bridge and deflecting Wayne and his horse to take the river alongside, but soon their vehicles have been shot to pieces and they are left to nurse their wounded and wait for help as Wayne rides by and leaves them behind. His horse also outlasts the motorbike that his son Michael rides with youthful enthusiasm, unsettling Wayne's steed to tip him into a muddy puddle, hairing among the rocks to distract the men ambushing the Rangers, but wrecking it in a crash. It is Wayne who symbolizes dependability and stamina. He has almost become a man of the past. Four times people see him and declare "I thought you were dead," but Wayne proves himself to be very much alive. After the third person makes the remark, Wayne warns "The next man says that I'm gonna shoot, so help me." The next man is Fain. We find Wayne donning spectacles to read the ransom note, an idea borrowed from Joel McCrea's ageing westerner of Ride the High Country (1962), and old Sam Sharpnose confessing his sight isn't what it used to be, but Big John at least is still sharp-eyed enough to observe that his son James is favoring one leg owing to a concealed bullet wound.
It's Big Jake, alias John Wayne, who carries off the film, like the ransom chest, on his broad shoulders. Without him, it would have been in a minor bracket.
| Jacob McCandles | John Wayne |
| Martha McCandles | Maureen O'Hara |
| John Fain | Richard Boone |
| James McCandles | Patrick Wayne |
| Michael McCandles | Chris Mitchum |
| O'Brien | Glenn Corbett |
| Pop Dawson | Harry Carey Jr. |
| Sam Sharpnose | Bruce Cabot |
| Little Jake McCandles | John Ethan Wayne |
| Jeff McCandles | Bobby Vinton |
| Bert Ryan | John Agar |
| Buck Dugan | John Douchette |
| Head of lynching party | Jim Davis |
| John Goodfellow | Gregg Palmer |
| Hank | Hank Worden |
| Stubby | Jerry Gatlin |
Shooting as The Million Dollar Kidnapping) from early October to early December 1970.
Location filming at Durango, Mexico
Released June 1971 (U.S.); August 1, 1971 (G.B.)
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