The Cowboy Way

Is it just me, or does it seem like every­one in Hollywood is trying to do East­wood? After all, what is The Cowboy Way except a muddled clone of the old Clint thriller Coogan's Bluff? Sure, there are some major differences between the two movies. For one thing, Eastwood didn't need a sidekick — he just needed his Stet­son and a guidebook to New York City.

In The Cowboy Way, Woody Harrelson and Kiefer Sutherland play cowpokes who've landed in Gotham and need more than their hats. Among other things, they need a script that's better than the tired old nag that's been hitched to this movie. The story is strictly a substandard, buddy action yarn, in which the boys play bron­co-riding hombres from New Mexico who go to the Big Apple in search of a lost friend. The friend turns up dead (don't they always?), and the boys find themselves heading for a showdown with a fistful of Cuban mobsters.

Naturally, the automatic weapons of the East Coast posse are no match for the Western six-shooter, and — continuing the element of fantasy — there's always a parking space in mid-town Manhattan for the boys' beat-to-crap pickup truck. Sutherland plays the strong silent type, while Harrelson does the dumb good-old-boy routine. Add a few barnyard jokes and a cameo appearance by Travis Tritt, and before you can say, "Line dance, anyone?" these men of the West are successfully pursuing a subway train on horseback. (I'm not making this up.)

The Cowboy Way has a few amusing moments. Three of them, to be exact. The rest of the movie is just dead space occasionally touched with a dash of crudeness. Of course, if you like gags involving a cow and some guy's private parts, then this flick is for you.