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"Remember, a parole can be a very temporary thing." The protagonist (Audie Murphy) finds out just how temporary, he steps into a train a free man and leaves it a fugitive. Sympathy from the Marshall (Leif Erickson) and persecution from the detective (David Bauer), "a cold deck shuffle all the way down the line," might as well join the old gang. The plan of robbing two banks at the same time goes doubly awry, the genial leader (Noah Beery Jr.) is shot and coins pour out of the bag of loot as if he were bleeding gold. Thus the Cimarron Kid at the head of the Daltons, dreaming of a ranch in Argentina but "heading straight to death on a dark road." Budd Boetticher's first Western, something like a Thirties programmer transformed by Technicolor, freshness of framing, and tender detail. Among the outlaws is a smiling beanpole (James Best) whose Mexican beloved (Yvette Duguay) insists on him wearing a necklace of the Virgin of Guadalupe for protection, his demise sees the trinket snatched from his body and the lady sending a warning to the rest of the gang while fighting off tears. The other maiden is a plucky farmer (Beverly Tyler) who loves the antihero enough to dress him down at the hideout: "The country's most notorious robber. So clever that you end up in this cold, filthy cave with a bullet hole in your side." Boetticher tersely sets up an ambush with main street deserted and blocked by covered wagons, then luxuriates in the ensuing action with steam and bullets and sharp angles on a rotating railway turntable. "It's been a long chase," it ends on a prediction of Penn's The Left-Handed Gun. With John Hudson, Hugh O'Brien, Roy Roberts, John Hubbard, and Frank Silvera.
--- Fernando F. Croce |