[3][4] John W. "Jack" Burns is a veteran of the Korean War who works as a roaming ranch hand, much as the cowboys of the old West did, refusing to join modern society.

They enter town to visit Jerry, the wife of old friend Paul Bondi, who has been jailed for giving aid to illegal immigrants.

He decides to remain, and Burns breaks out by himself, returning to Bondi's house, where he picks up his horse and some food from Jerry.

After the jailbreak, the sheriff learns that Burns served in the military during the Korean War, including seven months in a disciplinary training center for striking a superior officer.

He also received a Purple Heart and a Distinguished Service Cross with oak leaf clusters for his valor during battle.

Whiskey is repeatedly spooked by the helicopter, so Burns shoots the tail rotor, damaging it and causing the pilot to lose control and crash land.

Burns leads his horse up difficult, rocky slopes to escape his pursuers, but the lawmen keep on his trail, forcing him to keep moving.

Burns tries to cross Highway 66 in Tijeras Canyon with Whiskey during a heavy rainstorm, but the horse becomes spooked by the traffic and blinded by the lights.

The sheriff arrives and, when asked by the state police if Burns is the man who he has been looking for, says he cannot confidently identify him because he has never seen the suspect up close.

[3] Miller directed the picture with a reverent and eloquent feeling for the landscape, complementing the story arc of a lone and principled individual tested by tragedy, and the drive of his fiercely independent conscience.

In his memoir Conversations with Kennedy, Ben Bradlee wrote, "Jackie read off the list of what was available, and the President selected the one [film] we had all unanimously voted against, a brutal, sadistic little Western called Lonely Are the Brave.