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rmax304823

A nice guy, Gary Cooper's career had run out of steam by the 1950s and he made a string of mostly undistinguished Westerns. "Man of the West" is one of the better ones, directed by Mad Anthony Mann. Mann was the fellow responsible for reviving Jimmy Stewart's post-war career as a dramatic actor in some brutal Westerns.

Cooper isn't that good a replacement for Stewart. As an actor, he's not as good at projecting anguish or rage. And he's older. When he's knocked down in a fist fight or falls to the floor after being wounded, there's a painful quality about the scene because no one enjoys seeing the limbs of a tall and elderly man flailing about.

Yet, this is pretty rugged stuff -- due to the direction and performances, not the screenplay. The plot has Cooper and two other innocents left behind by a train in the middle of nowhere. They're a hundred miles from the nearest town, so Cooper leads them to a sprawling shack whose location he recalls from his young, more reckless days. Alas, the shack is still occupied by Cooper's one-time companion, Dock Tobin (Lee J. Cobb), and his gang of four, including some sterling character actors like the mute Royal Dano, the retarded Robert Wilkes, the wolfish Jack Lord, and the thoughtful John Dehner.

Cooper had wised up and ridden away from the gang years ago but Dock welcomes him back, believing he means to stay. He also welcomes one of Cooper's companions, the Hollywood-glamorized Julie London, for somewhat different reasons. The third companion, Arthur O'Connell, generates no interest in the gang. O'Connell's character's name is Sam Beasley, which tells you just about all you need to know. For what it's worth, O'Connell and Jack Lord give the two most notable performances. Lord fights Cooper in a jagged scene, and Cooper humiliates and tears Lord's clothes off in public. A memorable fist fight.

Anyway, Cooper claims that Julie London is his woman and goes along with Dock's assumption that Cooper is here to stay. He isn't, of course, and when the bullets fly at the end, in the ghost town, Cooper and London are left standing.

Cobb's Dock Tobin is a slob but a sentimental one. He puts a stop to Jack Lord's rape of Julie London and otherwise keeps order among his wild gang. One doesn't REALLY want to see him killed. He's not pure evil, like Jack Lord. So in order to justify Cooper's shooting of Dock, the writers have him rape Julie London in Cooper's absence. It's out of character but provides the viewer with some sense of satisfied revenge as we watch the plugged Dock roll endlessly down a long steep hill, bouncing, flapping, but always downward as if that rolling will never stop, looking remarkably like the stock market the day after I get giddy enough to dip a toe in it.

One of the major irritations I had with this movie, common to the genre, are the names of the characters. My own extensive research of real cowboy names reveals that Link never occurs, nor Matt, Luke, or Clint. The three most common names in fact are Alistair, Governeur, and Montmorency. Will these clichés never end?

As a Western, above average for the 1950s but not by much.

score 6/10

rmax304823 15 February 2009

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2023609/