Long before Clint Eastwood was making our day as Dirty Harry or even roaming the badlands without a name for Sergio Leone, he was working the cattle drive on Rawhide. Rawhide was created to take advantage of the huge Western film and television wave that Hollywood had been riding for nearly a decade. With huge ratings for Gunsmoke and Bonanza among others, Rawhide was a bit of an unlikely success. Here the show explored the West on an endless cattle drive to get a few thousand steer to market. Along the way the crew would find themselves involved in someone else’s troubles or meet trouble head on themselves. The cattle drive theme would rely on the changing landscape to distinguish the show from other more sedentary westerns. More like Wagon Train, the constant movement always gave a sense of action even when there wasn’t much. Of course, there was a large number of changing support players along on the drive. Every operation needs cooks, ropers, and red-shirts.

A very young Clint Eastwood played Rowdy Yates. Unlike any cowboy you ever saw, Rowdy had slicked-up hair and looked more like a biker than a cowhand. He was the greenhorn in the bunch, usually finding each experience a learning opportunity. He had an almost naïve charm that made him popular. The original cast featured Eric Fleming as Gil, the trail boss. The third main character was Pete Nolan, played by Sheb Wooley. Sheb formed a good relationship with Eastwood that would be rewarded years later when Eastwood created a role for him in The Outlaw Josey Wales. I didn’t really watch the show even in its limited syndication run, so knew most of it by reputation only. Of course, I knew the Frankie Laine theme that has been used for everything from selling cars to western spoofs. The tune was also a moderate radio and record hit in the day.

With the clock ticking till the release of Batman vs. Superman, Warner Bros needs to do all it can to get the fans on board for the arrival of the the Justice League.  When it comes to the handling of the DC universe, though fans may be divided on the films, it seems just about everyone will agree the animation is about as good as it gets when it comes to comic adaptations.  In the case of the Justice League perhaps the only way to get it right is through animation, considering there seems to always be something massive going on that it would seem nearly impossible to translate in a live-action setting.

The Legion of Doom, headed by Lex Luthor, has managed to reach the Arctic Circle, where Lex sets in motion one of his most fiendish plans, to absorb water from around the globe, increasing the shorelines to which he has previously purchased the land.  The Justice League arrives just in time, and in the process of their fight, Lex is trapped in a block of ice where he is thought to have perished.

I have to admit when I first went into this film I went in with some rather low expectations.  I turned out to be more than a little surprised by this little underdog story that has a lot of heart as well as plenty of knuckle-crunching fights.  Sure, this follows in the footsteps of Rocky and The Karate Kid, as we follow a young fighter who overcomes great odds to achieve victory, and we’ve seen it before.  What helps this film stand alone is that it’s also a tale about revenge set in the world of small-time cage fighting.

Ever since witnessing the murder of his parents in a carjacking gone wrong, Michael Shaw (Cody Hackman) has been a bit of a reckless youth.  Constantly in and out of trouble with the law and poor grades in school, Michael is given one last chance as he is forced into doing community service at a local dojo.  The dojo is run by Reggie (Michael Biehn), a Karate instructor who at one time knew Michael’s father.  Stuck with janitor duties, Michael watches from the sidelines as Reggie trains his students, and this sparks Michael’s interest in taking up martial arts again.