"The Shadow Riders" (1982)

My best friend and I like to say that Cowboys Make Everything Better, and that sure has been true of The Shadow Riders (1982) for me.  I first watched it on my own last fall while laid up with an upper respiratory infection when we got home from my dad's funeral, and it was just the right kind of hope-filled western to boost my spirits.  I watched it again this summer with my husband after a crushingly stressful week, and it once again both soothed me and perked me up.  It has such a flavor of insistent optimism.  None of the main characters ever frets that they won't succeed at what they need to do, so the viewer never does either.  And that is so much what I need, sometimes.  Determined and confident cowboys.  Such good medicine.

I had watched The Sacketts (1979) not long before seeing this the first time, and I was absolutely tickled to see Tom Selleck, Sam Elliott, and Jeff Osterage playing brothers in a Louis L'Amour adaptation again.  Although I mightily enjoyed The Sacketts, most of my enjoyment there was due to having read all the Sackett books by L'Amour and liking how the characters were brought to life onscreen.  I haven't read the book The Shadow Riders yet, but man, do I like the movie!  (I'm not entirely clear which came first, actually -- the book or the movie?  I read somewhere that L'Amour wrote this story for Tom Selleck and Sam Elliott to star in, so did he write the book first, or just the storyline?  I haven't really dug around enough to find out.  If you know, please tell me!)  In some ways, I think this is a stronger movie than The Sacketts -- particularly in its ability to be enjoyed by people who don't know the storyline ahead of time.  I had to explain some backstory stuff and other things to my husband while watching The Sacketts because he got a bit confused by some of it, but such was never the case for The Shadow Riders.

Anyway, the story follows three brothers: Mac (Tom Selleck), Dal (Sam Elliott), and Jesse (Jeff Osterhage) Traven.  (Why does Jesse get a full name, but Mac and Dal only get what feel like half names?  Inquiring minds want to know.)  The film opens during the very end of the Civil War, with Confederate soldier Dal and Union soldier Dal just trying to get home to their Texas ranch again.  

I have to pause here and mention that my husband is a big fan of Sam Elliott.  And there's a moment when Mac and Dal first arrive home and are greeted by their father (Harry Carey, Jr.), but their mother (Jane Greer) isn't sure for a minute if Dal is who they say he is because a) he was reported dead during the war, and b) he's covered basically his whole face up with a bushy beard.  But when Dal says, "How're you doing, Mama?" she knows it's him because, as she says, "There's only one man in the world with that voice."  At that point, my husband completely busted up and was alternately laughing and crowing, "She's got that right!"  And he really loves to quote that moment now.

Anyway, as soon as they get home, they have to leave right away again because their two sisters and their brother Jesse have been kidnapped by white slavers, along with the woman Dal loves silently and deeply, Kate (Katharine Ross).  Off Mac and Dal go, determined to do whatever it takes to rescue their siblings and Dal's One True Love and whoever else might need rescuing.

Meanwhile, Kate is bound and determined to escape their captors and take all the rest of the kidnappees with her before they can be sold in Mexico.  And Kate is the sort of woman who doesn't get defeated easily.  I want to be friends with her.

Jesse gets free with Kate's help and joins back up with his brothers to plot how to rescue their sisters and Kate, and free the other captives -- the bad guys took a bunch of men like Jesse too to sell as slaves to Mexican silver mines.  (They're equal opportunity kidnappers, you see.)

The brothers enlist the help of their rascally Uncle "Black Jack" Traven (Ben Johnson), who steals every scene he's in.  I've been a Ben Johnson fan since I was 11 or 12, ever since I first saw Chisum (1970) -- I am always happy to see his name on the cast list for a movie, because I know I'll smile while watching it.  Even when he plays an antagonist, I still just want to hug him.

Of course there are lots of exciting altercations and narrow escapes and plot twists and such, including a sequence involving a micro-trope I love exceedingly much: people walking around on top of a moving train.  Even the first time I watched this, I was in no doubt of the outcome, though.  And that doesn't make this movie boring, it makes it comfortable and relaxing and downright fun.  For me, anyway!  It feels like a throwback to the westerns of the 1950s where everything is guaranteed to turn out all right in the end.  And I love that.

Maybe that old-fashioned vibe is partly due to The Shadow Riders being directed by Andrew V. McLaglen, who directed quite a few of my favorite old western movies, like The Rare Breed (1965) and Chisum (1970), plus episodes of so many great old TV westerns.  (He also directed The Blue and the Gray (1982), which I love very dearly, but that's not a western.  I still had to mention it, though.)

Is this movie family friendly?  Mostly.  Obviously, there's the whole human-trafficking plotline, but it's handled in a matter-of-fact way, shown to be a wrong thing that Must Be Stopped.  There's some mild cussing, consistent with a 1980s made-for-TV movie.  The violence is non-gory.  There's a bit of dialog innuendo about the fate the female kidnappees are headed for, and also a scene when we're introduced to Selleck's character where he's lying in bed kissing a woman and they get interrupted, but everyone is fully clothed and it is minimally suggestive.  I'd say it's fine for older kids and teens.

You can stream The Shadow Riders on Amazon, Tubi, and the Roku Channel, and also buy it on DVD and Blu-Ray.

This review is a contribution to this year's Legends of Western Cinema Week, which I'm co-hosting this week.