McQueen is Junior Bonner, an aging rodeo champ who returns to his home town to participate in the annual rodeo. He finds his family estranged, does what he can to help, and then moves on ... after some good rodeo riding and a few brawls.
A film filled to overflowing with small, subtle beauties.
– Don Druker,
Chicago Reader,
1 Jan 2000
fresh:
Junior Bonner may be the least Peckinpah-like in content, but it's very much like his other work in spirit.
– Keith Phipps,
AV Club,
30 May 2001
fresh:
Junior Bonner, based on an excellent original screenplay by Jeb Rosebrook, is Peckinpah in the benignly comic mood that, I suspect, is much more the natural fashion of this fine director than is the gross, intellectualized mayhem.
– Vincent Canby,
New York Times,
20 May 2003
rotten:
The movie simply never comes together and works as a whole. The material is terribly thin.