Figured might as well get back to this topic: I gave Bronco Billy a chance the other day and I thought with all its flaws it works as this feel-good, uplifting picture that I would have probably liked seeing as a kid. It comes from that period in Clint's career around the late 1970s and early 1980s when I guess he was kind of looking back at himself and trying to broaden his appeal to children and other audiences that you wouldn't normally associate with something like Dirty Harry. You can see him being a bit self-referential, playing this kind of Man with No Name-wannabe character, and I think for what its worth the movie does a fairly good job of affirming these old-timey Western values through an entertaining story. I can sense Clint was trying to convey a message through this film. Sure, the script is all over the place, the humor often isn't really that funny and I wasn't very big on Sondra Locke's performance, but overall it's just something short, sweet that I find works best caught on TV on a lazy Sunday morning.
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