Stagecoach (1939)

April 3, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Stagecoach (1939) movie poster

director John Ford
viewed: 03/29/2013

John Ford’s first “talkie” Western, Stagecoach, was also the launchpad of “the John Wayne” that had been toiling in movies for over a decade. Seen as a watershed in both Ford’s and Wayne’s careers, it has long been considered a significant and important film.  And it’s also pretty damn great.

This was only the second Western that I’ve watched with the kids.  A year or so ago we watched The Magnificent Seven (1960), but for all of our movie-watching we hadn’t really delved into the Western.  Maybe this is part of a watershed for us of sorts, venturing into a more full spectrum of movies.

Stagecoach is the story of a group of characters who have boarded the titular conveyance, crammed together and then beset by warring Apaches, most notably Geronimo.  There is the aristocratic lady who is heading to be with her cavalry officer husband, the once aristocratic gambler, the meek traveling whiskey salesman, the drunken doctor, the prostitute, the sheriff, driver, thief banker, and then there is Wayne’s Ringo, a strapping young man escaped from prison out to avenge the murders of his father and brother.  Everyone has their own story, some more explicitly than others, but it’s also a study of class, prejudice, and redemption.

I had to explain to the kids what a prostitute is and why the people of Tonto, AZ decided to chase her and the drunken physician from town.  And then I went on to explain that the film was critiquing that behavior, showing that its sympathies sided with the outcasts.  So, not only do I have to talk about sex and commerce, but I tap into the basics of film analysis.  We certainly talk about the movies we watch, but it’s possibly the first time I found myself describing the narrative with those specific “tools” in mind.

Interestingly for me, this Criterion Collection edition of Stagecoach featured a commentary track by a former professor of mine from grad school, “Big” Jim Kitses (the “Big” was added by a colleague of mine and is not a commonality, I believe, in referring to the man.)  But it did take me back a bit to hear his loping, erudite old-school film professor voice booming from my television.  It impressed the kids a little, but probably just a little, to hear that I had worked/studied with him.  They tolerated only about 10-15 minutes of commentary.

It’s truly an excellent film, probably one of the most satisfying I’ve seen all year so far.  I’ve read that Orson Welles has said that he watched Stagecoach 40 times prior to making Citizen Kane (1941), as a tutelage in the art of cinema.  True or not, it would actually do quite well to operate as such a guide.  The narrative deftly weaves the stories of the many characters, the pacing and cinematography are prime, the Monument Valley landscapes definitive, and that dolly shot that introduces us to the Ringo Kid, Mr. John Wayne is straight-up cinematic iconography.

The kids both enjoyed it quite well.  I loved it.  And I can certainly proclaim: more to come!

Filed under DVD, John Ford, Westerns, With the kids

Django Unchained (2012)

December 31, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Django Unchained (2012) movie poster

director Quentin Tarantino
viewed: 12/25/2012 at CineArts @ the Empire Theater, SF, CA

Love him, hate him, feel ambivalence to him, Quentin Tarantino inspires a variety of responses, usually strong and pointed.  His revisionist Western about a freed slave turned bounty hunter, Django Unchained, will keep those emotions strong, though you might shift your position one way or another.

For me, it’s the most inspired big theatrical release of the year.

What’s inspired about it is the entire concept.  A revenge film about a freed slave empowered to high gun-slinging cowboy hero, shot in a style heavily informed by the Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960′s and 1970′s, it’s an anachronistic fantasy, absurd and yet profound, and more than anything, quite damn entertaining.

The Western genre represents a classic form of American drama and identity, defined from the end of the period itself in cheap magazines and novels and quickly taken up in cinema.  It’s a genre that started with the general heroism of European settlers taming the Wild West, fighting the brutal land and the native peoples who lived there, as well as the best and worst of human character in battles between the good, bad, and ugly.

And until the 1960′s, this was a white man’s version of America.  Even in films that were subversive or culturally critical, the fact of the matter stood that the heroes were white, no matter what color they wore.  Revisionist Westerns, which began in the 1960′s started to take up the mantle of the Native Americans, no longer purely posing them as savage villains but trying to begin to accept the reality of what was America’s first most atrocious defining reality: not simple mistreatment and misrepresentation, but the genocide that cleared the West for “American” settlers from sea to shining sea.

While it’s doubtful that the Western has ever come to full terms with that, revisionism to the classic and codified tropes of cinema for this genre opened doors for other angles as well.  But outside of Mel Brooks’ satire Blazing Saddles (1972), I can’t think of another important Western that really dealt with an African American protagonist in this largely historical genre.  Many films have been centered around pre- and post- and during the Civil War, but slavery as a key topic is most unusual.

Why I call Tarantino’s “Spaghetti Western” conceit inspired is that it gives license to the story to not have to hew to utter historical truths.  Adding in a musical score featuring funk and hip-hop, he rises above mere meta-commentary, film referencing and, much like he did in Inglourious Basterds (2009), with his fantasy revenge of Jews massacring Nazis in World War II, he sets a stage for a radical narrative in a world of mixed history and “truthiness”.

The criticism that has arisen about his use of the word “nigger” in Django Unchained seems incredibly off the mark.  The world depicted here, the pre-Civil War South is the place that such an epithet was defined, and as ugly as it is to hear it, it’s probably one of the more close to historical truth aspects of the film rather than unpleasant indulgence as it was in his contemporary film Jackie Brown (1997).  It’s far more fantastic, this whole concept of this German dentist turned pro-emancipation bounty hunter, than the commonality of that word in that period in that place.

It’s a radical concept, this film, and more than anything, it’s funny, brutal, clever, surprising, inventive, and exciting.

Jamie Foxx is great as Django, as Christopher Waltz is as Dr. King Schultz.  But Leonardo DiCaprio gets the best role as the juicy horrible slave owner Calvin Candide.  Samuel L. Jackson is also fantastic in his role as Candide’s head house slave, with his own virulent racism and complex relationship with the worst people in the film.

I have to say that this is probably the best new film that I’ve seen in 2012.  Tarantino is suggesting that he wants to step down from film-making before he starts to “get old” and start turning out lame films as many of his hero directors did.  But oddly enough, it seems that he’s actually at the top of his game at the moment, tapping into things that somehow touch on much more profundity than arguably his earlier films did.

This is a very good film, I think.  A clever, inventive, inspired concept, executed aptly and beautifully.  One of the best trips to the theater in a long while.

Filed under Quentin Tarantino, Theatrical, Westerns

Meek’s Cutoff

October 2, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Meek's Cutoff (2010) movie poster

(2010) directed by Kelly Reichardt
viewed: 09/25/2011

The latest film from Oregonian film-maker Kelly Reichardt, Meek’s Cutoff is essentially a Western, but placing it in that genre might seem more a misnomer than any kind of indicator of what the film is really like.  If you’ve seen other of Reichardt’s films, such as Old Joy (2006) or Wendy and Lucy (2008), you might have a better sense of what to expect.  Reichardt makes films about smaller stories, more intimate narratives, with naturalism taken to levels of low-key that blends toward the oft boring reality of life.  So far, always set in Oregon.

Meek’s Cutoff is a period film, set in the mid-19th Century, following a trio of covered wagons being led west by a dodgy trailblazer named Meek, whose shaggy face and demeanor, plus his long-promised, though not yet found destination have made the families suspicious of his abilities.  In this, the film faces a more epic reality than a lost friendship or a lost dog, but survival of men, women and children.  In that sense, there is a deeper drama than in her prior films, and perhaps a more epic scope behind the tenor of quietude and empty space.

The easy criticism is that it’s slow and boring.  While in some ways more things happen than in the other films, Reichardt portrays the probably reality of being lost in the Western emptiness, that it’s isolating and not filled with raging excitement.  Perhaps in that sense, there is a realism not attempted by many Westerns, that starving to death is just not a very exciting thing to watch.

The film stars Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy star, Michelle Williams.  Here playing a bonnetted woman of her day, stronger perhaps than her societal role or clothing might suggest, but one who is still beholden to the highly unreliable Meek.  When Meek captures a native American, with whom they cannot communicate, the moral dilemma is struck.  Is he, as Meek tells them, a killer who would just as soon bring his tribe down upon them, or is he possibly their only real hope of finding fresh water?

I appreciate Reichardt’s integrity, her approach to narrative, of telling smaller stories, stories regionally tied to a specific place.  I also don’t necessarily recoil at a slow film (not that I’m up for one everyday).  But Reichardt has yet to achieve something greater than its smaller scope.  For even Meek’s Cutoff, with its inherent drama in the life and death struggle of the European settlers, the moral ambiguity of their relationship with nature and the native people, their hopes hung upon an unreliable leader, it still doesn’t manage to speak to deeper, more powerful depths.  Her interests are often in those who are lost, in small ways or psychological, emotional ways.  And she wants to achieve narrative completion without some false element or device, but when this film ended, it felt incomplete.  Not because it ends without resolution (it does end without resolution), but because the interior story didn’t manage to make even that lack of resolution resonate in a way of power.

I have hopes for her yet.  And I like Michelle Williams.

Filed under DVD, Michelle Williams, Westerns

Cowboys & Aliens

August 1, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Cowboys & Aliens (2011) movie poster

(2011) director Jon Favreau
viewed: 07/30/2011 at Century San Francisco Centre 9 & XD, SF, CA

Alien invasion movies have become more and more common.  Does that signify some cultural commentary on xenophobia or is it simply the largely bankrupt creativity in Hollywood aligning itself with facile digital effects?  Whatever the case may be, the aliens themselves are less and less unique from one another and these films typically have a hard time distinguishing themselves from one another, much less “the pack”.

So, a good ol’ alien invasion film set in the Old West earns its share of novelty.  In fact, many people hearing the title hoped somehow for some possible strange mash-up of two staple American genres, the Western and the sci-fi film, something different for sure.  Produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by Iron Man (2008) and Iron Man 2 (2010)’s Jon Favreau, and starring both Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig, this enough was to expect one of the more intriguing summer movies of 2011.

Adapted from a graphic novel, this novel idea isn’t purely novel, though it might emanate from a more obscure comic compared to the slate of other major flagship comic book adaptations hitting the screen over the past few and coming years.  This film certainly has/had potential.

And its potential is not entirely squandered.

Actually, after initial reviews came in fairly weak, my expectations were lowered most likely.  I have to say that while I liked the whole concept pretty well, I wasn’t wowed or intrigued by the trailers.  And despite a lot of valid critique, it’s a reasonably fun film.

Of course, I took the kids, with whom I’ve seen almost all of my recent films and certainly an increasing number of the summer fare of 2011.  They both liked it.

The story opens with a shot of the desert, and then Daniel Craig popping up looking confused.  He’s got a large metal bracelet on his arm, no shoes, and no idea who he is or where he is.  It’s a little The Bourne Identity (2002) with OO7 as a cowboy.  He tracks back to the closest town where an attractive, fairly unlikely historical female character (modern, tough, and independent), played by Olivia Wilde, sidles up to him with interest.  As his memory comes back in chunks, it seems that he was a bandit before, with some weird paranormal thing that gets set into action when the aliens come into town in force and start blasting everything and abducting people.

The mash-up ends about where it starts.  The film lacks that “meta” mentality and sticks with the summer action thrill-ride and straight-forward narrative.  Which works in its favor, mostly.

The thing about the Western is that it began a post-modern bent by the 1960′s almost, and it’s virtually impossible to make an un-self-aware Western in the 21st century.   I guess that is where so many critics have found disappointment, in the film’s adherence to genre conventions and a significant disavowal of trying to make anything more challenging from the conventions.  We’ve got two genres riddled with conventions and an adherence to those conventions even when they’re being flung at one another in some weird mix of possibility.

Well, maybe you shouldn’t complain about the film that it failed to be and simply try to enjoy what they managed to put on screen.  It’s disappointing if you hoped for more, but if you’re like Felix and Clara, who went in with few expectations and preconceptions, you can take the whole thing much more at face value.  And that face value is decent.  Good perhaps.  Not great.

Filed under Aliens, Science Fiction, Theatrical, Westerns, With the kids

The Magnificent Seven

July 10, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The Magnificent Seven (1960) movie poster

(1960) director John Sturges
viewed: 07/09/2011

Eight years ago (this film diary denotes literal perspective and history by its own existence), I saw The Magnificent Seven (1960) for the first time in my life.  I was utterly taken with it, classic that it is, and felt utter reinforced in the realization that a lot of the “greats” of cinema are greats of cinema for a reason.  It was a lot of goddamn fun.

When my mother passed away five years ago, in going through her belongings, I found a DVD copy of this film that I had so enjoyed and took it home to my small DVD library.  But I hadn’t watched it again in that time, despite having it on my shelf.  But then when the kids and I were due to watch Empire of the Sun (1987) and the DVD came cracked from Netflix, I was pushed to look to my small collection of movies on disc that I could watch with the kids.  Considering how many animation collections I have, there were only 3 movies I deemed possibilities.  And this film became, somewhat by accident, their introduction to the American Western.

I have to say, in some extremely haphazard way, my programming for Felix and Clara is possibly my projection of my fantasy of curating my own art house cinema, with some aspect of education and breadth.

The Magnificent Seven is indeed magnificent, but it’s power on the big screen was much more large and potent for me.  And I would imagine it so for anyone.  This is the thing about the big screen, right?  To be overpowered by the sight and sound, by the narrative and imagery.  And for a film like this, it’s easy to recall how rapt I was in seeing it thus.  It’s still terrific on my not-so-large screen television.  And it still has power, as films do, even diminished in their projection and experience.  But it struck me how overwhelming and pleasurable it is to have Yul Brynner looming above you.

In the time since I last saw The Magnificent Seven, I also finally saw the Seven Samurai (1954), the magnificent Akira Kurasawa film that “inspired” it.  I also managed to see director John Sturges’ other populist classic, The Great Escape (1964), which is also charming (and perhaps equally so on the big screen).  I have also, in those eight years hence, seen any number of Samurai films and Westerns and come to have somewhat a better context for appreciating the film.

For me, this viewing was nowhere as rapt, but was still struck by the pure charm of Brynner and Steven McQueen, by the great supporting roles of Eli Wallach, James Coburn, Robert Vaughn, and Charles Bronson.  I was also struck again by the so frequent references and asides to it and its predecessor, such as Pixar’s A Bug’s Life (1998).  And the amazing score by Elmer Bernstein, which I would definitely place among the most iconic in cinema.

The kids really liked it in the end too.  Felix mentioned to me before it ended that “the next movie that he was going to make” would be a “cowboy movie”.  Given that this was his first, I’m very eager to initiate him further into the genre.  Clara also said she liked it a lot, which surprised me a bit, since she was more wriggly during the early parts of the film.  But towards the end she settled and got into the final shoot-out.

The Western is a great genre.  The Magnificent Seven is a great Western.

Filed under DVD, Westerns, With the kids

Straight to Hell

January 17, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Straight to Hell (1987) movie poster

(1987) director Alex Cox
viewed: 01/16/11

A comic, Surrealist homage to the Spaghetti Western starring the likes of Joe Strummer, the Pogues, Elvis Costello, Courtney Love, Grace Jones, Dennis Hopper, and Jim Jarmusch.  All brought to you by director/co-writer Alex Cox (Repo Man (1984) & Sid and Nancy (1986)).  To think that such a film exists is enough argument to see the darn thing.  The flukey weirdness of its creation and existence is perhaps as unusual as the film itself.

Actually, it starts out like a story from which Quentin Tarantino probably glommed a considerable amount.  Three suited bank robbers (Strummer, Dick Rude and Sy Richardson) foul up a crime and then head into the desert with Richardson’s pregnant blond girlfriend (Love).  Which I suppose is Mexico, though it’s filmed in Spain.  They wind up at one of these proverbial ghost towns, which in actuality had been created for a Charles Bronson Spaghetti Western, where they meet the local outlaws/town heads, whose henchmen are the Pogues in Mariachi costumes.  And they drink coffee maniacally.

There is a lot more nonsense than sense throughout, but riffing loosely on the themes and standbys of the genre, it’s entertaining nonsense.  Some of the humor works better than others, and while several actors return from Cox’s earlier and more successful Repo Man, you can almost imagine what this is striving for in the times when it flails more than succeeds.

Of course it all ends in the inevitable shoot-out in which most of the principals are killed.  But beyond that, the film has a wacky spirit, and more than anything, a great cult cast.  It’s really kind of fun and a little better than I’d anticipated.

A welcome anomaly.

Filed under DVD, Westerns

True Grit

December 28, 2010 by 1 Comment

True Grit (2010) movie poster

(2010) directors Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
viewed: 12/23/10 at the California Theater, Berkeley, CA

First of all: Great Movie.

I’ve been looking forward to this film since I first read that the Coen brothers were adapting Charles Portis’ 1968 Western novel.  Several years back, a friend of mine recommended the book, which she took to in her youth, identifying with the story’s lead, 14 year old Mattie Ross, who narrates the novel and whose “voice” defines the book.  She resented the 1969 film adaptation, for its take on the material, though she loved Glenn Campbell.  I never did see the original adaptation, the John Wayne film, for which he earned his one and only Oscar.  But the book.  The book is excellent.

With the Coen brothers at the helm, Jeff Bridges in the Rooster Cogburn role, I was pretty excited about it.  And, it lives up to expectations.  It’s a deft and adept adaptation, carrying Portis’ clever and characteristic dialogue from the novel and into the script.  It’s a great yarn, with great characters, and the cast is excellent.  Matt Damon, who plays the Texas Ranger LaBeouf, was never more likable.

Like many a Western, the story is relatively simple.  After her father his murdered in cold blood by a hired hand, Mattie Ross seeks to find justice.  The Arkansas town doesn’t have the police force to track down the villain, so she looks to hire a U.S. Marshal to bring the killer to justice.  She seeks Cogburn because she deems him to have “true grit”.  He does indeed, but is also besotted often and quite irascible.  LaBeouf is also after the same man for a murder of a judge in Texas some time before.

The Coen brothers, I’ve seen all of their films.  Like many people, I’ll anticipate any film of theirs, even though they have moved away from the pure aesthetics and weird storytelling of their earlier work.   True Grit is a very straight-forward film, including a musical score that is somewhat traditional as well (and perhaps one of the film’s few weaknesses in my opinion).  But it’s a great film, with great performances, great characters.  It’s really quite a hoot.

One of the best films of the year, for sure.

Filed under Coen Brothers, Theatrical, Westerns

Jonah Hex

November 25, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Jonah Hex (2010) movie poster

(2010) director Jimmy Hayward
viewed: 11/20/10

Rancid, joyless tripe.

Filed under DVD, Michael Fassbender, Westerns

Rio Lobo

August 31, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Rio Lobo (1970) movie poster

(1970) director Howard Hawks
viewed: 08/28/10

A rather disappointing swan song for the great American auteur Howard Hawks, Rio Lobo is his second re-working of his great Western Rio Bravo (1959) from a decade prior and his final film.  Also disappointing was his prior re-working of Rio Bravo, El Dorado (1966).  Many critics consider Rio Bravo to be his last great film, but it’s interesting that he went back to the well not just once but twice.

I’d queued up both Rio Bravo and Rio Lobo back when I’d seen Red River (1948), but only got around to seeing them after watching John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), which truth be told, is better re-working of the material than Hawks himself managed.  By the 1960′s, the classic Hollywood Western had gone through some major evolutionary changes, whipped about by directors like Sergio Leone (and other Spaghetti Westerns) and Sam Peckinpah.  Like many film genres, the Western is a lens upon the time of its production, a set of rules or standards or structures which can be used as a metaphorical setting for stories about other things.  But the Western in the 1960′s and 1970′s became typically more revisionist, at least in regards to the way that the classic Western had mythologized American values and history.  It’s actually probably a fantastic cultural study to pore over the bulk of the genre this way.

But Rio Lobo is stuck.  It’s still trying to be the classic Western as in the heyday of the studio system, following the conventions, not breaking from them, and it pins its Hollywood style on its leading man, John Wayne, yet again.  But here, he’s now over 60 and his voice is raspier and more tired-sounding.  He’s bigger and older, still a commanding presence, but now surrounded not by quality players as in Rio Bravo, but a bunch of not so hot young actors (with the exception of the great Jack Elam).  And the story, which is kind of convoluted when you boil it down (even though it is written or co-written as was Rio Bravo by Leigh Brackett), is more of a paint-by-numbers sort of build-up to the shoot-out at the end.

What’s interesting about viewing films through the auteur theory lens is that even the poorer films of a great director’s oeuvre are fascinating.  In studying authorship, it probably is more interesting, particularly with a good Hawksian film scholar.  But sadly, watched for simple pure enjoyment, it’s not an argument in and of itself for Hawks, Wayne, or the Western at all.  It’s tired and heavy with re-tread.  And especially so for me, since only earlier in the day I’d watched Rio Bravo.

I’m not trying to say what makes a film great or not great.  I’m sure there are a lot of ways to slice it, analyze it, parse it, and study it.  I watched it because it was a Howard Hawks film, a sibling of sorts of Rio Bravo.  So, don’t get me wrong, I do watch films accordingly.  It’s just too bad that his final film was a mere shadow of his finer work.  But one might find that that is often the case.

Filed under DVD, Howard Hawks, Westerns

Rio Bravo

August 30, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Rio Bravo (1959) movie poster

(1959) director Howard Hawks
viewed: 08/28/10

Inspired by watching John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), which was inspired by director Howard Hawks 1959 Western, I decided to queue up Rio Bravo, which I’d actually had in my film queue for a few years now anyways.  I’ve often noted that it’s pretty impossible to have seen all the great films of the world, probably impossible to have seen simply all the great films from Hollywood alone.  And I watch a hell of a lot of movies compared to the average Joe.  Bottom line, I’d never seen Hawks’ great western, though I had seen one of his own re-tinkerings with it, his 1966 film El Dorado.

It’s one thing to see the films that cannibalized Rio Bravo, or paid homage to it.  It’s another to go to the source material, one of Hawks’ most-beloved films.

It stars John Wayne, Dean Martin, Angie Dickinson, Walter Brennan, and Ricky Nelson, so the cast, while a little on the odd side as a grouping, is actually pretty damn great.  Wayne is the sheriff in a Texas town, holding prisoner the murderous low-life brother of a wealthy, disreputable family until regional authorities come to take him for trial.  But the villain’s brother hires a litany of would-be killers for money to stake out the town and wait for the right moment to strike and free the prisoner.  All that Wayne’s sheriff has on his side, is the gimpy Brennan, the recovering alcoholic Martin, and eventually the young hotshot Nelson against the crew of killers-for-hire.  Well, actually, he’s go the sexy, slightly sullied Dickinson and the diminutive Mexican hotelier on his side too, but then that’s all part of the film’s legend.

It’s said that this film was made, partially, in response to High Noon (1952), the classic Fred Zinneman Western starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly, which is considered a metaphorical critique of McCarthyism and the House of Un-American Activities (HUAC).  In High Noon, Cooper is a sheriff who can find no one to help him fend off the coming of a gang set to kill him.  The town’s cowardice is meant to reflect the cowardice of those who didn’t stand beside the accused Communists.   Wayne in particular hated High Noon for these reasons, and the common reading is that Rio Bravo is a conservative political response to the earlier film.  In Rio Bravo, while Wayne’s buddies are all a little questionable on the outside, they all stand up, show their pluck and their worth in the end.  I actually don’t know how that plays out with the HUAC metaphor, but it is oppositional in its narrative.

More than anything, it’s a Howard Hawks film, and a great one for applying the Auteur Theory to as it exemplifies many of Hawks’ ideological considerations, visual styles, characterization, and humor.  It’s certainly the best of Hawks’ Westerns that I have seen and a very likable film.  You can easily see why it’s a favorite of so many.

I grew up disliking Wayne, perhaps for what he symbolizes (and how much of that includes his conservative politics) or perhaps what I’ve projected on him.  But Wayne in cinema is quite a grand and interesting figure, who starred in numerous great films made by a number of great directors.  This film, made at the end of what is sometimes referred to as the “Western cycle”, or the end of the period of the classic Hollywood Western, still works from that same set of staple elements that made the classic Hollywood Western a great genre.  It’s still part of the studio system, it’s classic Hollywood, up and down.  Wayne is 50 years old in this film, but he’s still a rock-solid hero and star.

Angie Dickinson is striking beautiful in this film (I can’t say as I’d ever thought much of her before), and she’s a classic Hawksian female lead: fast-talking, able to drink and “be one of the guys.”  Martin puts in a solid dramatic performance, with added humor and a song as well.  Heck, Ricky Nelson, even not given much to do and not doing a whole lot with it, also is a charming asset in the film.  And Walter Brennan.  Jeez, I love Walter Brennan.   A fine film, all told.

Filed under DVD, Howard Hawks, Westerns

← Older posts