Debutant director Robert Benton’s Bad Company came as an alternative western story, one where draft dodgers instead of drifters with little or no background go west and end up using guns that they really never meant at the outset.
Set in the American Civil War years, the movie follows the story of teenage boy Drew (Barry Brown) in Ohio whose family helps him escape conscription. Drew arrives in Missouri where he meets a small group of young draft dodgers like him, led by the cocky Jake Rumsey (Jeff Bridges). As the group heads west, their adventures take a dark turn and they find their lives imperiled as much, if not more, as by the battlefield they fled.
Contrary to the traditional/classic western’s portrayal of cowboys getting into hand and gun fights in their small town western settings, Bad Company takes a coming of age story of boys driven into the wild by circumstance at home and thus becoming men when they weren’t quite ready for it. Drew and Jake make great foil characters with common grounds that override their key personality differences.
Bad Company mixes juvenile humor with western adventure, including shootout scenes that lack the grit of a traditional western. Still, the darkness of the reality the young men battle through in order to make it to the west alive is conveyed dramatically well. The internecine play of betrayal, revenge, and friendship creates great context for the loner protagonist in classic westerns. These growing up men make the viewer see and understand why one could become a solo drifter if he started out as a draft dodger.
Bad Company is for those fans of the genre who want to see a different kind of western and witness the impact of the background story on the hands that shoot the gun.
