JEREMIAH JOHNSON ***

A near-great western from an unlikely Sydney Pollack who takes to the great outdoors like a duck to water. Robert Redford is Jeremiah Johnson and he, too, may seem an unlikely choice to play a mountain man but he handles the role with considerable aplomb. It's a big expansive picture beautifully shot on location by Duke Callaghan and with an excellent script by John Milius and Edward Anhalt which they adapted from two books, "Mountain Man" and "Crow Killer". For the most part this is a western about man fighting nature rather than his fellow man and it's all the better for it which isn't to say that Jeremiah doesn't have to do his share of Indian fighting in order to survive. One of Pollack's very best films