John Wayne hires a group of schoolboys to help him on a cattle drive in this morose, awkwardly paced and overlong would-be epic western. In truth, this rite-of-passage saga just doesn't work, owing to a cumbersome structure and a rather nauseating pro-violence, revenge-is-good message. On the plus side, Bruce Dern and Slim Pickens are good to watch, and Roscoe Lee Browne and Colleen Dewhurst add thespian dignity. But the movie isn't worthy of Wayne, and is indicative of his lack of luck finding strong material following his Oscar for True Grit .

When his cattlemen abandon him for the gold fields, rancher Wil Andersen is forced to take on a collection of young boys as his cowboys in order to get his herd to market in time to avoid financial disaster. The boys learn to do a man's job under Andersen's tutelage, however, neither he nor the boys know that a gang of cattle thieves is stalking them.