McQueen hopes to end his losing streak at his hometown Prescott rodeo. He wants to ride the top bull, Sunshine, and win enough money to send his father off on his next 'get rich quick' adventure. In between, he fights with his brother and acquires an admirer in hottie brunette Barbara Leigh. Westerns veteran Ben Johnson shows up as manager of the Prescott rodeo.
How others will see it. Junior Bonner was directed by Sam Peckinpah, whose films (especially The Wild Bunch and his best movie, Straw Dogs) were notorious for their violence. But Peckinpah is on better behavior here. Even in the large-scale bar room brawl, the action is comic and nobody seems to get hurt. This is also the case for the rodeo scenes. Plenty of cowboys are thrown from horses or bulls, but fear not. None are injured.
If the danger inherent in the rodeo is never realized, and the bar room brawl is played for laughs, is the film authentic? At times, no. McQueen punches his brother through his living room window, and the latter is hardly the worse for it. But there are times when the atmosphere seems genuine, such as the parade down main street, the huckster brother's trailer promotion, the sense of small town pride and community, and the first-class country band (apparently led by the obscure Rod Hart, whose only other brush with fame was the novelty song "C.B. Savage") in the saloon. But 'genuine' isn't always the same as exciting, unless you watch movies to see accurate enactments of small town parades.
How I felt about it. Such timing. McQueen returns to Prescott after months on the road, and within minutes of his arrival sees his former home demolished by a construction crew. McQueen's bad timing continues: he can't find his father in his former home, at his mother's, at his brother's, at the hospital, or at the rodeo. But give McQueen his due. He's a patient man, and finally tracks his father down at a parade, after his father has 'stolen' his horse.
McQueen is also a stubborn man. In Prescott, he promptly receives job offers from his brother, his father, and from Ben Johnson, who just might feel sorry for the past-his-prime McQueen. But McQueen still thinks that the next time, he's gonna stay on that bull for eight seconds. Because it's a movie, he could be right.