The Castaway Cowboy

1974

Comedy / Family / Western

4
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 24% · 3 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 24% · 50 ratings
IMDb Rating 5.8/10 10 1057 1.1K

hawaii cowboy

Director

Vincent McEveety Photo
Vincent McEveety

Top cast

James Garner Photo
James Garner as Costain
Kim Kahana Photo
Kim Kahana as Oka
Robert Culp Photo
Robert Culp as Bryson
Vera Miles Photo
Vera Miles as Henrietta MacAvoy
720p.WEB 1080p.WEB
841.56 MB
1280*772
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles cz  dk  gr  us  es  fi  fr  hu  nl  no  pl  pt  ro  sv  tr  cn  
23.976 fps
1 hr 31 min
Seeds 5
1.52 GB
1792*1080
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles cz  dk  gr  us  es  fi  fr  hu  nl  no  pl  pt  ro  sv  tr  cn  
23.976 fps
1 hr 31 min
Seeds 7

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by planktonrules 6 / 10

Better than I'd expected.

"The Castaway Cowboy" begins with Mr. Costain (James Garner) washing ashore on the island of Kaua'i in the Hawaiian Islands back in 1850. It seems that Costain was kidnapped and forced to work on a ship...and he availed him a chance to escape by jumping overboard.Soon Costain is befriended by a widow and her son. The MacAvoys have a large plantation there, but it's being underutilized and the crops are failing. Costain has an idea...why try to make pennies on crops when there are dollars to be make cattle ranching. This film is about the difficulties encountered trying to make a go of it. Some of the difficulties were cultural, some were definitely man-made.In 2022, this film might be seen as a bit politically incorrect in the somewhat paternalistic way the Hawaiians are portrayed....and Disney+ mentions this on a tacked-on prologue. Fortunately they have NOT trimmed the film. I also noticed near the end that Costain was using a revolver...something pretty much impossible in Hawaii at the time. The revolver wasn't mass produced until the 1850s...and finding one in 1850 in such an out of the way place seems more than just unlikely. Not a major problem...just something this history teacher noticed.All in all, a decent movie...especially since in the 20th century Kaua'i DID become a big cattle producing island! Yep..cowboys and cattle on the island!
Reviewed by VetteRanger 7 / 10

Basically, I'm just headed for Texas

I thought it was Australia? Oh ... that was Support Your Local Sherrif, and there is a lot of that character in James Garner's performance in this film.Garner looks a bit heavier and a bit slower in this film, as the injuries he'd suffered in previous roles started to catch up to him. This was just before Rockford, where he often moved like an old man because of them.This is a great fish out of water film, and the novelty is it works both ways. Garner's Costain, rescued after he escaped from a ship that shanghaied him, finds himself totally out of place among the native Hawaiians, and on a potato farm.Once Mrs. MacAvoy (Vera Miles) learns she might leverage some wild cattle into saving her failing farm, she convinces Costain to retrain her farm hands as cowboys. That's the second fish out of water element, because the Hawaiians initially don't fare too well as cowpokes. :-)But with training mishaps, witch doctoring, and having to figure out how to load cattle on ships with no docks available, Costain almost gives up.Garner is always a good watch. I've never been disappointed.
Reviewed by bkoganbing 7 / 10

Cattle Come to Kaui

Having been to Hawaii and actually going through the famous Parker ranch on the big island, I'm in a better position to comment on this film now than before.The Castaway Cowboy is one of two films James Garner made for the Disney studio in the Seventies. He's a Texas cowboy who got himself shanghaied in San Francisco and jumped ship and washed ashore on Kaui. Right into the arms of widow Vera Miles and her son Eric Shea who are struggling to make a living as farmers. A lot of wild cattle keep trampling up their crops. So Garner gets the idea that they ought to start cattle ranching instead. Of course the Hawaiian farm hands don't readily take to the American cowboy culture. Of course they eventually do in the end.Cattle came to Hawaii courtesy of British explorer George Vancouver who left them on the big island. It was the descendants of those cattle with which John Parker founded his ranch. No doubt some of them made it to the smaller islands in the chain.Of course there's a villain in the piece and it's Robert Culp. He's a banker with eyes to grab Vera Miles land and maybe Vera herself. Culp does resist the tendency to model his performance on Snidely Whiplash and he's a worthy rival of the resourceful Garner.Of course there are paternalistic attitudes towards the native Hawaiians. But if you want to see a serious film about those attitudes than watch the film made of James Michener's novel Hawaii. This is a Disney family product and doesn't pretend to be social commentary.The Castaway Cowboy is a good entertainment. How could it be anything else with James Garner starring.
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