The Castaway Cowboy (1974)

Written by CinemaSerf on May 27, 2023

James Garner ("Costain") is washed up on the beach of an Hawaiian island where he is befriended by a widow "Henrietta" (Vera Miles) and her young son "Booton" (Eric Shea). They are struggling farmers, and so he sets his mind to try to help them out. All of this much to the chagrin of local bigwig "Bryson" (Robert Culp) who has designs on their cattle and on the good lady. The ensuing adventure is actually quite clunkily put together. It mixes mysticism, romance and avarice before an ending that though innovative, I found rather impractical and even a little cruel. It is still quite a fun family film to watch, though - perhaps some of the attitudes to and of the locals might not quite fit nowadays, but viewed in the spirit in which it was made 50 years ago, it is typical of the Disney-style of message mixing adventure and morality, and is just about worth 90 minutes of your time.