A Classic Western with an uncommon story line.
10/10
Author: Mike Steele from Broken Arrow, OK.
4 February 2003

I wish this movie was available on DVD. At the time this was made it was a very different western. Not the usual shoot-em-up. The story of a dying breed, it really speaks to us the situation of finding out the job you've done all your life is now somehow obsolete. I especially like the Mama Cass song and the John Barry treatment of it that is reprised throughout the movie. The only opportunities I've had to see this are the few times it has appeared on broadcast TV. I'm hoping the original wide screen version will someday be available on DVD. There is a CD out now with the soundtrack, but it is very hard to find.

Painful and Beautiful
10/10
Author: bill-461 from LA, CA
15 June 2000

This movie should be re-released. I can't help thinking that it came out at a time when we as a nation had our mind on other things. And that's a shame. I remember that I went to see it at one of the first multi-cinemas in Utah and What's up Tiger Lily was playing along side of it. My friend and I couldn't get in to the more risque movie (Utah---imagine that,) so we stepped into this one. And even an idiot in the ninth grade could be touched by this melancholy tale.

I love Lee Marvin and Jack Palance. And Mama Cass did this movie a great service with her song The Good Days are Comin'. Do yourself a favor and see this one. Your heart will hurt a little at the end, but it's a good kind of pain.

One of the best westerns ever!!!
10/10
Author: harelik-1 from United States
17 November 2006

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

The cowboy way-of-life is quickly coming to an end, and Chet and Monte try to carve out a new life - with great difficulty.

This movie has it all - authenticity, love, loyalty, and desperation. Treat yourself to one of the best movies ever made starring Lee Marvin and Jack Palance. This part of our U.S. history is accurately and lovingly recreated in this cinematic wonder. The cowboy has never been underrepresented in film, but this masterpiece shows us with thrilling detail the personal struggles that came with the end of their way of life. Monte Walsh is also an amazing allegory of the American way of life. Do Not pass this one up.

A wonderful, sad, poetic film
10/10
Author: Thomas Jacques (lickskillet@hotmail.com) from Brinkley, Arkansas
7 May 2002

"Monte Walsh" is an astounding film, astounding in that so few people seem aware of it. Lee Marvin heads an outstanding cast including Jack Palance, Jeanne Moreau and Mitchell Ryan in this elegant adaptation of the Jack Schaefer ("Shane") novel. The movie may be thought of as one of those so-called "revisionist" films of the era which re-examined the concept of the western.

"Monte Walsh" offers a vision of a dying cowboy lifestyle, of large cattle corporations and fewer jobs, of the growth of towns and the death of rowdy freedoms, of hard lives and few attractive options. Marvin encapsulates many of these aspects as the title character, forced daily to realize his entire way of life is over. Director William A. Fraker does a fine job of drawing fine performances from his cast, and of capturing the hard beauty and constant state of change in the American West.