Crocodile Dundee in the Old West
When Cole Younger’s gang is involved in a robbery-gone-wrong in a town in the Southwest, the lone survivor, Jack Kane (Paul Hogan), acquires a mute newbie partner (Cuba Gooding Jr.). He wants to make one last big score before moving to New York with his saloon lass (Beverly D'Angelo).
"Lightning Jack" (1994) is an amusing Western starring Hogan, but it’s not an all-out comedy like, say, “Blazing Saddles.” Ball-park comparisons include “The War Wagon,” “Sam Whiskey,” “Something Big,” "Cattle Annie and Little Britches," “Maverick” and “The Lone Ranger.” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” is another, but that one’s a little more serious.
While not great and relatively slow-moving, the locations are excellent and the developing relationship of the antiheros is entertaining. Beverly is another highlight.
While the opening bank job is similar to the doomed 1876 real-life raid in Northfield, Minnesota, Cole Younger was only wounded and ended up in prison in which he worked on a newspaper as a printer’s devil. He was paroled in 1901 and ended up writing a memoir, lecturing and touring in a wild west show with Frank James. A couple of years before his death in 1915, he became a believer and repented of his criminal past. By contrast, Cole’s brother, Jim, was paroled with him in 1901, but couldn’t adjust and so committed suicide fifteen months later in a hotel room in Saint Paul.
At the end of the day, if you liked the Crocodile Dundee flicks, you’ll probably appreciate this.
The film runs 1 hour, 37 minutes, and was shot in Santa Fe; Tucson and Page, Arizona; Moab, Utah; and Colorado; with some interiors filmed in the studio on the Gold Coast, Australia.
GRADE: B-/B
