The Sundowners

The Sundowners (1960) starring Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchum, Peter Ustinov. Not really a "Western," this movie is about a family of sheep drovers in 1920s Australia. The chief conflict in the film is that the father, Paddy (Mitchum), always wants to keep moving from one job to the other, whereas the mother, Ida (Kerr), and the son, Sean, want to buy a farm and settle down. Crises they face include a bush fire along the trail while they are driving some sheep, and a sheep-shearing contest which Paddy is entered in. The movie eventually got me involved so that I cared about the characters' fates. But the ending was something of a letdown, with no real resolution to the film's conflict. (Subtitles are provided, as well as closed captions.) Grade: B