John Wayne is Jacob McCandles, an aging cowboy in an Old West that is on the verge of modernization. When his eight-year-old grandson is kidnapped by a violent gang led by the evil John Fain (Richard Boone), Jacob's estranged wife (Maureen O' Hara) enlists his help to rescue the boy. Jacob and his three sons (one of whom is portrayed by Wayne's real-life son Patrick) set out to bring the gang to justice. This late-period Wayne western is characterized by a gritty realism not present in most of his earlier works. The surprisingly graphic violence is also tempered with abundant humor.
Big Jake is not one of the Duke's classics, but a diverting attempt nonetheless. Everyone seems to think that Jacob McCandles is six-feet under ("I thought you was dead" is a running line throughout), so some bad men kidnap his grandson. They want a piece of the family fortune and will kill to get it. Patrick Wayne, the Duke's own son, plays one of Big Jake's kids, and together they start out after the boy's abductors. Richard Boone makes a worthy adversary to Jake's larger than life figure, and the final confrontation between the two contains some great gritted-teeth dialogue. Maureen O'Hara is barely in the feature, sharing the same fate as Bobby Vinton as the boy's father. He seems to be onscreen just to get shot. --Keith Simanton