Maverick (film)

Plot

In the American Old West, wisecracking gambler Bret Maverick (Mel Gibson) is on his way to a major five-card draw poker tournament. Maverick wants the prize money and to prove he is the best card player of his time. Short $3,000 of the $25,000 tournament entry fee, Maverick travels to the town of Crystal River, intending to collect on debts and win money at card games. He encounters the ill-tempered gambler Angel (Alfred Molina), the young con artist Annabelle Bransford (Jodie Foster), and lawman Marshal Zane Cooper (James Garner).

Maverick, Bransford and Cooper journey out of Crystal River together, overcoming runaway stagecoaches and aiding migrant evangelical settlers who have been waylaid by bandits. The settlers offer Maverick a percentage of the money they have collected to start a mission, but Maverick cannot bring himself to accept it. The trio are later cornered by a band of Indians led by Joseph (Graham Greene). His companions are unaware that Joseph and Maverick are good friends; Maverick "sacrifices" himself to allow his companions' escape. Joseph is indebted to Maverick; they scheme to swindle $1,000 from an Russian Archduke that Joseph owes to Maverick.

Angel gets word that he needs to stop Maverick from reaching the tournament. He also learns that Crystal River Maverick conned him. Angel assaults Maverick, leaving him for dead by hanging from a tree. The branch breaks under Maverick's weight, he boards the paddle steamer Lauren Belle and he makes it to the on-board tournament. Angel already is seated for the game. Cooper oversee the security. Maverick learns that Bradford is $4,000 short of the entry fee, and he, $2,000. The Archduke is on board so Maverick cons him fir $6,000.

By the time of the tournament "break", there are four players remaining: Maverick, Bransford, Angel, and Commodore Duvall (James Coburn), the boat's owner and the tournament organizer. Maverick and Bransford have a tryst, someone chains his door shut and he makes it back from the break just before the game resumes at the 5 A.M. deadline. Bransford is eliminated from the tournament.

Maverick protests when the dealer cold decks and is bottom dealing Angel's cards. Unable to switch dealers, Maverick agrees that Angel get a one card off-the-top deal. Duvall and Angel each bet "all in"; Maverick holds back looking at his discard replacement believing that what he needs will with his mental gift materialize. At the reveal, Angel has a straight flush, but Maverick's single card deal of an ace of spades, gives him the game-winning hand, a royal flush. Angel draws his gun and Cooper and Maverick shot him and his stooges dead.

When Maverick is presented the $500,000 grand prize, Cooper escapes the boat with it; Maverick prevents Duvall from shooting Cooper. At a nighttime meeting in the woods, Cooper and Duvall discuss their success: Angel was working for Duvall, and Cooper's job was to steal the money if anyone other than Duvall had won the tournament. Duvall betrays Cooper and prepares to shoot him, but they are interrupted by Maverick, who recovers the money back and leaves a single gun to settle between them their argument. It is unloaded; Cooper beats up Duvall just short of killing him and sets out after Maverick.

Cooper finds Maverick relaxing in a tub and threatens to shoot him but the pretense is dropped when they acknowledge they are father and son; they had all along conspired after the $500,000. As Cooper enjoys a bath of his own, Bransford enters and robs the two, having surmised the relationship from their similar mannerisms. After she escapes, Maverick tells Cooper that she only got half the money, the rest being hidden in his boots. He admits that getting the money back will be much of fun.

Cast

There are multiple cameo appearances in the film from Western actors, people who have formerly worked with Donner, Gibson, Foster, or Garner, and other celebrities including Danny Glover (uncredited), Hal Ketchum and Corey Feldman as bank robbers; Read Morgan and Steve Kahan as card dealers; Dub Taylor as a room clerk at the opening game; Art LaFleur and Leo Gordon as poker players at Maverick's first game; Paul Brinegar as the stagecoach driver; Denver Pyle as a cheating old gambler; Robert Fuller, Doug McClure, Henry Darrow, William Smith and Charles Dierkop as riverboat poker players; Dan Hedaya as Twitchy, another Riverboat poker player; William Marshall as a riverboat poker player defeated by Angel; Dennis Fimple as Stuttering, a player beaten by the Commodore; Bert Remsen as an elderly riverboat gambler beaten by Maverick; and Margot Kidder as missionary Margaret Mary in an uncredited appearance.

Leo Gordon had played a semi-regular supporting character in seasons one and two of the original Maverick TV show: gambler Big Mike McComb. Gordon also later wrote a few episodes of the show. Margot Kidder had been Garner's co-star in the short-lived western TV series Nichols. Danny Glover's cameo appearance references Donner's Lethal Weapon film series starring Glover and Gibson as cop partners. Their meeting in Maverick sees them share a moment of recognition, and as he leaves, Glover says Roger Murtaugh's catchphrase: "I'm getting too old for this shit."

Country singers also cameo including Carlene Carter as a waitress, Waylon Jennings and Kathy Mattea as a gambling couple with concealed guns, Reba McEntire, Clint Black as a sweet-faced gambler thrown overboard for cheating, and Vince Gill and his then-wife Janis Gill as spectators.

Production

The steamboat used in the film—dubbed the Lauren Belle—was the Portland, the last remaining sternwheel tugboat in the US; at the time it belonged to the Oregon Maritime Museum in Portland. Over several weeks, the boat was decorated to alter its appearance to resemble a Mississippi-style gambling boat, including the addition of two decorative chimneys. In August 1993, the production requested permission to film scenes of the riverboat along the Columbia River in Washington State. The artificial smoke released by the boat's chimney was considered to violate air-quality laws in Washington and Oregon and required approval for the scenes before their scheduled filming date in September 1993. After filming concluded, the decorations were removed and the boat was returned to its original state.

In Five Screenplays with Essays, Goldman describes an earlier version of the script, in which Maverick explains he has a magic ability to call the card he needs out of the deck. Although he is not able to do so successfully, the old hermit he attempts to demonstrate it for tells him that he really does have the magic in him. This scene was shot with Linda Hunt playing the hermit but it was felt it did not work on the context of the rest of the movie and was cut.

Reception

The film has received generally favorable reviews. The film garnered a 67% approval rating from 52 critics – an average rating of 6 out of 10 – on the review-aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, which said, "It isn't terribly deep, but it's witty and undeniably charming, and the cast is obviously having fun."

James Berardinelli, from reelviews.net, gave the film three and a half stars out of four. He stated, "The strength of Maverick is the ease with which it switches from comedy to action, and back again....it's refreshing to find something that satisfies expectations." Reviewing it for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of a possible four, writing: "The first lighthearted, laugh-oriented family Western in a long time, and one of the nice things about it is, it doesn't feel the need to justify its existence. It acts like it's the most natural thing in the world to be a Western."

Box office

The film earned $101,631,272 (55.5%) in North America and $81,400,000 (44.5%) elsewhere for a worldwide total of $183,031,272. This gross made it the number 12 highest-grossing film in North America and the number 15 highest-grossing film worldwide of 1994. As of 2013, the film is the number 6 highest grossing Western film in North America.

Pre-release tracking showed that the film would open strongly,. During its opening weekend in North America, Maverick earned $17.2 million million from 2,537 theaters – an average of $6,798 per theater – ranking as the number 1 film of the weekend, and took a total of $41.8 million over its first two weeks of release.

The movie was a box office success as it grossed over $183 million worldwide.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack featured three chart singles: "Renegades, Rebels and Rogues" by Tracy Lawrence, "A Good Run of Bad Luck" by Clint Black (which also appeared on his album No Time to Kill), and "Something Already Gone" by Carlene Carter. Also included on the album was an all-star rendition of "Amazing Grace", from which all royalties were donated to the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.