The Criterion Channel has just unveiled a collection called "Western Noir" consisting of post-war Westerns influenced by Film Noir (duh). This is one of several collaborations between Jimmy Stewart and the director Anthony Mann. I liked it - it throws you into the action without explanation and just runs with it, no flashbacks or anything like that. The film begins with a closeup of Stewart's spurs (which will feature at the climax) as he rides up to old (the actor was just 50 at the time!) grizzled prospector Jesse Tate and holds him at gunpoint.
After he finds out Jesse is harmless, Stewart's character, Howard Kemp, offers him $20 to help him track down the man he is seeking, who is in the area. The area is the Colorado Rockies (this film has some amazing scenery) and Kemp has been tracking the man, Ben Vandergroat (the granite-featured Robert Ryan, last seen in
On Dangerous Ground, but here playing a total heel, who spends far too much time laughing at his own jokes) since Kansas. Howard lets Jesse believe he's a law man, and shows him a wanted poster with the bottom ripped off, but this doesn't fool a dishonorably discharged Union soldier they run into
(Roy Anderson, played by Ralph Meeker, probably best known for playing the oafish Mike Hammer in the amazing atomic-age noir
Kiss Me Deadly, and equally unpleasant here, albeit all-but-unrecognizable, perhaps because of his mustache) who cottons immediately that Howard is a bounty hunter and there's money to be made. Indeed, after Roy and Jesse help Howard capture Ben, who, it turns out, is accompanied by the daughter of a partner-in-crime who died on the job (Janet Leigh, dressed in men's clothing and with a very anachronistic haircut),
Ben reveals the complete wanted poster, and it turns out he's worth $5,000. So all five characters (who, apart from some nameless Indians, comprise the entire cast) set out for Kansas, with Ben plotting to set the other three men off against each other and Roy and later Howard lusting after Janet Leigh. The Indians show up fairly soon because they've been chasing Roy (who, apparently, got up to shenanigans with the chief's daughter - there's a reason his discharge papers have "immorality" on them). Howard and Jesse would be happy to let them go by and chase Roy, but Roy conspires to have our party fight the Indians, and Howard gets shot in the leg. After that it's a slow boil to a shocking conclusion. Nobody comes out looking good, although Howard (who used to know Ben, even playing cars with him on occasion) has an excuse because while he was off fighting in the war, his betrothed sold his farm and ran off with another man, and Howard wants the reward to buy back his property. Will anybody get out alive? Well not all of them will, I'll tell you that for nothing. And watch for those spurs!
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