Okay Scott Oater

rmax304823

It's not a complex story either physically or morally but it's not a simple-minded Western as Western's go. True, whenever the hero removes his hat his hair is combed and jelled, but it's not as if we had John Wayne in an oversized Stetson battling evil with a comic sidekick either.

Scott was the great stone face of Westerns. He had two or three expressions, a deep voice that sounded as if he had a slight cold, and that was it. His career progressed from light-hearted roles in the 1930s, through war movies in the 40s, and into Westerns in the 50s. He retired in the early 60s after one of his best movies, "Ride the High Country," one of the richest men in Hollywood, retreated to his golf course and never gave another thought to movies.

We have, too, Claude Jarmon, Jr., who made "The Yearling" and then more or less faded away. But we also have Lee Marvin in his thuggish heavy period. He's great. In every scene his pulpy oleagenous lower lip seems to droop down and keep his mouth open. He's selfish, a murderer, a rapist, and a betrayer of his word. It takes several slugs from Jarmon, Jr., to kill him and he pitches down with his limbs splayed, his most flamboyant death besides that of Liberty Valence. But then, come to think of it, it takes several slugs to kill anybody in this movie. Every shot that misses is a resounding ricochet.

The story. Ex-confederates rob gold from ex-Yankees and are chased by a band of money-hungry brigands. The ex-Rebs take a couple of hostages and hole up in a stagecoach stop surrounded by murderous goons. The core of the plot involves the interaction of a dozen or so people, divided into initially conflicting groups, having to come to terms with one another's real selves. For instance, Donna Reed, who looks as if she'd been raised in Iowa exclusively on a diet of applie pie a la mode, is a nurse who is almost engaged to Richard Denning, who wears a splashy vest. (You must always beware of men in the West wearing suits and loud vests.) He turns out to be a rotter and Reed falls for Scott instead and -- well, you get the picture. In some ways the most touching of these sub-plots involves Jarmon, Jr., as a young Reb who's never killed anyone, and his deepening relationship with a crusty old Yankee man and his embittered and widowed daughter who have lost their young man in the war. Okay, it's all a little mechanical, but it's the sort of thing that you wouldn't find Gene Autry mixed up in.

I don't agree that this film is as good as the ones Scott made later with director Boettiger and writer Kennedy. Scott being Scott, his movies tend to be as good as their villains. Except for Lee Marvin these guys are pretty colorless. Boettiger did one of his movies with Scott, in which Marvin was the chief heavy and on display more often than he is here. There is no real comparison between the two Scott-Marvin films. Boettiger's is a lot more fun, although this one isn't bad.

score 6/10

rmax304823 20 April 2004

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0046815/