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Bartering wanderers in the wasteland, "comancheros, I think they call them." One (Randolph Scott) finds himself surrounded by braves in the laconic opening—he displays his trading goods on a blanket until a spear is thrust into the frame, he scratches his nose in contemplation and, after sweetening the deal with a rifle, rides away with their captive (Nancy Gates). The kidnapped wife with a generous reward, not the woman the protagonist was looking for but the one he'll protect on the way back to Lordsburg. Unfinished business with the bounty hunter (Claude Akins), henchmen (Skip Homeier and Richard Rust) uneasy with treachery. "Seems we've been over this before." The silhouetted rescuer at the beginning is still searching at the end, a characteristically elegant Budd Boetticher circle with no use for indoor scenes. The hero was once a Cavalry major, quick-thinking (he hurls the lady into a water trough to keep her safe when the bullets start to fly) but not so stoic that he doesn't holler when "jackass liniment" is applied to his wound. The outlaw's lackeys meanwhile are dim youngsters with limited choices, one can read enough to remember his father's teachings, "sure hope I amount to something." Lone Pine's Alabama Hills employed for marvelous color rhythms, pale sandy expanses with rustling trees painted with a gracefully craning camera. One thing to be proud of, that's plenty in the wilderness, all that's left otherwise is a shirt and a saddle. The dying station hand whose last thought is for his horse, the "pure shame" of the shootout followed by a Frostian revelation, Boetticher's triste serenity. "Man can cross over any time he has a mind." "It ain't that easy." Peckinpah's Ride the High Country is just over the rise. Cinematography by Charles Lawton Jr.
--- Fernando F. Croce |