A former rodeo champion (Robert Redford) endures endless degradation as a commercial ambassador for a breakfast cereal, protecting himself from the blows to his pride by keeping himself pickled to the gills. When he sees that his corporate bosses have in mind the same sort of tawdry show-biz career for an over-the-hill, twelve-million-dollar racehorse, his cowboy morality is reawakened, however, and he makes off with the beast in a not particularly subtle sequence set against the glitter of Las Vegas. As soon as he has been aroused to action, he leaves off drinking and acting dimwitted, and takes up being witty and articulate in the presence of a hotshot TV newswoman (Jane Fonda). This hats-off to rugged individualism is bound to remind you of Lonely Are the Brave, if you have ever seen that elegy on the vanishing American cowboy, although the subject has undergone drastic prettification as a romantic vehicle for the two twinkling stars. One rather charming scene, in which Fonda listens attentively as Redford expounds on the Western countryside in geographical generalities familiar to every grade-schooler, suggests the more intriguing possibilities of playing the hero as a horrible bore. With Willie Nelson and John Saxon; directed by Sydney Pollack. (1979) — Duncan Shepherd