MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Cowboys’: The Lost Windup

Squinty-eyed and sinewy, Scott Glenn is perfect casting as a rodeo veteran in “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys” (selected theaters), which itself is perfectly enjoyable under Stuart Rosenberg’s laid-back direction--until Joel Don Humphreys’s script cops out at the finish.

After an absence of five years, Glenn’s H.D. Dalton, a bull rider, heads home to Guthrie, Okla., to recuperate from his latest goring. A footloose type who lives for the thrills and spills of the arena, he is forced to realize that life has gone on without him and that much has changed. He’s chagrined that his long-widowed, obstreperous father (Ben Johnson) has been trundled off to a rest home by his upwardly mobile sister (Tess Harper) and her banker husband (Gary Busey) and stirred by the fact that his one-time love (Kate Capshaw), widowed with two kids, has no man in her life. In short, there are plenty of inducements for him to settle down at last.

The film, so inviting in its beautiful vistas and small-town locales and subtle James Horner score, is as easy-going as it is sure-footed in confronting H.D. on all sides with the one thing that he has always avoided: responsibility. If he wants his sometimes forgetful father back at the family homestead, then he will have to stick around to look after him; if he wants Capshaw’s sultry, down-to-earth Jolie back, he’s going to have to make an honest woman of her and be a father for her kids.

Perversely, just as it becomes incumbent upon H.D. to make a couple of the biggest decisions of his life, Humphreys lets him off the hook, turning his sister and brother-in-law unfairly into heavies and forcing him back into bull riding. What has been an engaging portrait of a likable guy grappling with the need to grow up at last lapses into just another macho fantasy.

Before it contradicts itself fatally, “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys” (rated PG for some discreetly presented adult situations, a scattering of four-letter words) is a charmer, with everyone, including Mickey Rooney as Johnson’s sweetly resigned rest-home roommate and Clarence Williams III as H.D.’s loyal pal, the local sheriff, as ingratiating as Glenn himself.

‘My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys’

Scott Glenn: H.D. Dalton

Kate Capshaw: Jolie Meadows

Ben Johnson: Jesse Dalton

Tess Harper: Cheryl Hornby

Balthazar Getty: Jud Meadows

Gary Busey: Clint Hornby

A Samuel Goldwyn presentation. Director Stuart Rosenberg. Producers Martin Poll, E.K. Gaylord II. Screenplay by Joel Don Humphreys. Cinematographer Bernd Heindl. Editor Dennis M. Hill. Costumes Rudy Dillon. Music James Horner. Sound designer John Pritchett. Running time: 1 hour, 54 minutes.

MPAA-rated PG (for discreetly presented adult situations, some curse words).