Junior Bonner

Junior Bonner (1972) is an American drama from Sam Peckinpah, available to watch online on iFILM. An aging rodeo rider nicknamed Junior comes back to his Arizona hometown and barely recognizes the place.

The house he grew up in is being bulldozed. His parents split long ago, his father drinks and chases pipe dreams, and his calculating brother has gotten rich selling off the family land for development. Junior — played by Steve McQueen — has nothing left but stubborn pride, so he bets everything on a single ride: staying on a bull no one has managed to tame, at the town's Fourth of July rodeo. Robert Preston, Ida Lupino and Ben Johnson round out the family.

For Peckinpah, famous for his brutal westerns, this is a rare quiet film — almost no gunfire, just a melancholy look at an old America being paved over by developers and dealmakers. McQueen plays it restrained and weary, and many critics rate it among his finest performances. Stream Junior Bonner (1972) online on iFILM.