Urban Cowboy (1980)

Urban Cowboy is the most entertaining, most perceptive commercial American movie of the year to date. Here is a tough-talking, softhearted romantic melodrama that sees a world that is far more bleak than the movie, or the characters in it, ever have time to acknowledge.

James Bridges's film, which he co-authored with Aaron Latham, has a mood and rhythm of its own -- it's in no hurry to knock your socks off. You have to get to know the characters, just as it takes time for them to get to know each other. Then suddenly, when Bud and Sissy's premature marriage starts to fall apart, you find that you care, and the spell is cast. Bridges shows an extraordinary gift for directing actors, and he gets a string of marvelous, fresh performances. [09 June 1980, p.84]

Director James Bridges has ably captured the atmosphere of one of the most famous chip-kicker hangouts of all: Gilley’s Club on the outskirts of Houston.

Only a couple years removed from his screen super-success in Saturday Night Fever, Travolta struts his way through Urban Cowboy’s modern-West parable about machismo, cowboy manqué, and mechanical bulls. Travolta captures some of the confusion of a little big man on the new prairie, Debra Winger provides a vixenish challenge to his manhood, and Scott Glenn plays the guy in the figurative black cowboy hat.

At no time is Urban Cowboy especially well-directed - Bridges, director of The China Syndrome and The Paper Chase, has yet to learn where to put a camera and when to move it. But the performances are so fresh, the dialogue so prickly and arid, and the milieu observed with such accuracy, that one's reservations regarding the cinematography, editing and a raft of other technical matters are held in check. [07 June 1980]