Plot
John W. "Jack" Burns works as a roaming ranch hand with his horse Whiskey. He carries no identification, and has no home address because he just sleeps wherever he finds a place.
One day as Burns crosses a highway into town, his horse has a difficult time crossing the road, scared by the traffic. Once over the highway, they visit Jerry, the wife of old friend Paul Bondi, who has been jailed for giving aid to illegal immigrants. Jack dislikes a society that restricts a man on what he can or cannot do.
To break Bondi out of jail, Burns decides to get himself arrested. After a barroom fight against a one-armed man, in which he too must use only one arm, Burns is arrested. When the police let him go, he deliberately punches a cop to get put in jail. Bondi is initially pleased to see him and Burns defends Bondi from the attention of bullying Deputy Sheriff Gutierrez. At night, the inmates saw through one of the jail's bars using two hacksaw blades that Burns had hidden in one of his boots. Gutierrez summons Burns in the middle of the night and beats him. Burns loses a tooth which he pockets. He cannot get Bondi to escape with him as Bondi has accepted his two-year sentence; his family mean he has too much at stake to risk becoming a fugitive which carries a five-year term.
Burns breaks out by himself, returning to Bondi's house, where he picks up his horse and some food from Jerry. They talk about what might have been and he acknowledges he could never have loved her like Bondi does; he never wanted to settle down. He asks for a kiss to give him the energy to reach the mountains and they kiss.
After the jailbreak, the sheriff learns that Burns served in the military during the Korean War, including seven months in a disciplinary training center for striking a superior officer. He also received a Purple Heart and a Distinguished Service Cross for his valor during battle. This gives the sheriff some sympathy for Burns.
Burns heads for the mountains, with the goal of crossing the border into Mexico. The police mount an extensive search, with Sheriff Johnson and Deputy Sheriff Harry searching in a jeep. A military helicopter is brought in, when the Air Force ask to be allowed to give their pilots some search 'practice'. The aircrew locate Burns and relay his location to the sheriff. Whiskey is repeatedly spooked by the helicopter, which continues to hover, so Burns shoots the tail rudder, causing the pilot to crash land. The pilots are OK but their general is angry at the cost to the military of the crashed helicopter and says so over the radio to the sheriff who cuts him off.
Deputy Gutierrez is on foot chasing Burns. He sees the horse on a corner and raises his gun, telling Burns to show himself, but Burns is behind him, and knocks him over. He then throws away Gutierrez's weapons and leaves his tooth in Gutierrez's pocket. Burns continues to head up the mountain with Whiskey. Surrounded on three sides, Burns finally surmounts the crest of the Sandia Mountains and escapes into a broad stand of heavy timber, with the lawmen shooting after them. Burns is shot through the ankle. The sheriff believes him to have escaped.
Burns tries to cross Highway 66 in Tijeras Canyon during a heavy rainstorm, but Whiskey is spooked and blinded by the lights. A truck driver strikes Burns and Whiskey and throws them to the side of the road. Burns is conscious and the horse is neighing in distress. The sheriff arrives and, when asked by the state police if Burns is the man who he has been looking for, says he cannot confidently identify him because he has never seen the man up close. Whiskey is shot (put down), and a shocked Burns is taken away in an ambulance.
Production
Lonely Are the Brave was filmed after Kirk Douglas read Edward Abbey's novel The Brave Cowboy and convinced Universal Pictures to produce it with him in the starring role:
It happens to be a point of view I love. This is what attracted me to the story – the difficulty of being an individual today. [3]
Douglas assembled the cast and crew through his production company Joel Productions, recruiting ex-blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo, who had written Spartacus two years before, to write the screenplay.
The movie was filmed in and around Albuquerque, New Mexico: the Sandia Mountains, the Manzano Mountains, the Tijeras Canyon and Kirtland Air Force Base. [7]
The working title for the film was The Last Hero, [8] but the release title of the film was a matter of contention between the studio and Douglas, who wanted to call it The Brave Cowboy, after the novel. Douglas wanted the film to open in art houses and build an audience, but Universal chose to market the film as a Western, titling it Lonely Are the Brave and widely distributing it without any particular support. Despite this, the film gained a cult following and is often listed as one of the best Westerns ever made. [3]
Miller directed the picture with a reverent and eloquent feeling for the landscape, complementing the story arc of a lone and principled individual tested by tragedy, and the drive of his fiercely independent conscience. [9]
Lonely Are the Brave premiered in Houston, Texas, on May 24, 1962. [8]
President John F. Kennedy watched the movie in the White House in November 1962. In his memoir Conversations with Kennedy, Ben Bradlee wrote, "Jackie read off the list of what was available, and the President selected the one [film] we had all unanimously voted against, a brutal, sadistic little Western called Lonely Are the Brave." [10]
