LeonLouisRicci A Stiff and Super Clean Look is What You Get From the Overrated Director John Sturgess Once Again. The Man Wouldn't Know Grit if it Covered the Bottom of His Elevator Boots. The Strong Acting from Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn with the Radiant Beauty of Carolyn Jones Cannot Save Another Clunker from Sturges and His Bland Direction.There is Some Tension from the Script, Borrowed from and Almost Identical to Other Recent Movies of the Era, the Shallow and By the Numbers Style of So Many Fifties Westerns Renders the Suspense Somewhat Anemic.The First Act is the Best and it All Goes Down (Gun) Hill From There. The Cinematography is Lusciously Competent but Nothing Different from a Thousand Other Professionals, and the Dimitri Tiomkin Score is Intrusive and Overdone Frequently.Worth a Watch with Low Expectations but for Those Looking for One of the Better Westerns from the Many in the Decade of "The Western", Need Look Elsewhere.

Robert J. Maxwell Two fine actors, Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn, at the top of their games. They were very different men but they had one thing in common: neither of them treated making movies as anything other than a means of earning a living. Quinn was reserved by Hollywood standards. He made no public service announcements or any such thing. Even his autobiography is sluggish. Quinn started in bit parts, usually as villains because of his dark looks. I think he played a romantic lead once in his career. Ot wasn't so much a career as a business, yet, he turned in some magnificent performances, as in "Viva Zapata." In contrast, Kirk Douglas' "Ragman's Son" is one of those autobiographies that is so unusually frank that it unwittingly exposes the author's weaknesses because he simply doesn't see them as weaknesses. He seemed to put a dollar sign before most of his transactions with others. He lacked empathy and treated some helpless people with the utmost cruelty. He ridiculed the notion of movies being "art." Yet, he too was memorable in many of his films, especially as a man possessed by some kind of Dybukk, as in "The Juggler" and "Champion." The guilty son, Earl Holliman, was a staple of films in the 1950s and his frequent appearances always puzzled me because the poor guy is fundamentally uninteresting. He hits his marks and recites his lines but he always sound as if he's whining about something. His features are equally dull, a dished face and two big ears. Caroyn Jones is the lady in the case, bitter, cynical, but won over at the end by Douglas' rectitude.There is effective direction by John Sturges. Sometimes it's subtle but mostly functional. All the usual conventions of the traditional Western are followed. Every man wears a pistol strapped to his leg and there is danger everywhere, but, as in other Sturges flicks, no one is muddy. Ranches all about but no one is muddy. Nor do we see anyone on Quinn's cattle ranch doing anything with cattle. Sturges seemed most attracted to town Westerns, where a man could get a drink at a decent saloon and find a game of Red Dog. Every man, no matter his state, has been shaved closely by the studio barber.The story in some ways resembles "3:30 To Yuma" but it's more taut, less mechanical. Earl Holliman is the weak wastrel son of cattle baron Quinn. He pursues and rapes a beautiful Indian woman, not knowing that she's the wife of Douglas, the Marshall of a nearby town. Douglas discovers the culprit's identity and shows up at the ranch to take him back. Quinn and Douglas are old friends and Quinn tries to dissuade Douglas from making the arrest. The streets line with Quinn's men ready to shoot Douglas as he tries to board the train with his prisoner and the tension grows. Come to think of it, at a slightly higher level of abstraction, it's "Rio Bravo", in which the sheriff is holed up with a prisoner guilty of murder and the whole town is waiting to gun him down.It's a tragic situation and a moving one. Quinn is in the more difficult position. He doesn't want Douglas killed but neither can his pride allow his son to be hanged. In the end, justice is done but a price is paid for it.

Dark Jedi Watching this was a tour to the land of nostalgia and an enjoyable one at that. This movie is really one of the god old classical Westerns telling the story of two brave men confronting each other. No special effects, no aliens, no choleric outbursts and no foul-mouthed brats.It was really enjoyable to watch Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn in this movie. Both were well suited for their roles and I have always liked them as actors. Maybe this is just some nostalgic connection I have though since I am sure that their performance would not wind them any Oscars today.The story is as classical as the movie. The young brat of a wealthy cattle owner gets himself in big trouble and said cattle owner tries to prevent him, being the only son, getting what he deserves. Unfortunately the other side is not only as tough as the cattle owner but also happens to be the law. The story is well executed by John Sturges. It has the usual elements that you would expect from this kind of movie, two men posturing against each other, a bad guy who also ends up being a prisoner, a girlie torn between the two men, a few gun and fist fights and of course a grand finale.I was enjoying every minute of this old classic.

dsewizzrd-1 In the Wild West, Kirk Douglas is a man whose wife is raped and killed by the son of a local big man. He vows to bring the young man to justice. His father is an old friend. Holed up in a hotel, Douglas asks the girlfriend of the widower for a shotgun, although he has no need for it as he has a handgun already. This plot device is used purely to create dramatic tension between the three. A goon of the big man sets fire to his hotel, even though Douglas has to leave anyway to catch the only train out that day.This is largely a run of the mill Western except for the early scenes, which don't really add any more than the nuanced plot in earlier Westerns would have done. It's all surface and uncomplicated, which won't bother the typical Western fan, or the lack of plot sense.