The Tall T
This Budd Boetthicher/Randolph Scott project is overrated. I'll admit it's watchable and certainly has merit, but at the end of the day it's a middling movie riddled with faults.
As usual, I'll start with some positives:
Here's some of the things that kept this movie from being better:
Also, about that bet. Wouldn't his former boss have allowed him to ride the horse he lost home, and return later with two horse? Or loan him a horse? The guy is trying to get Pat to come back to work for him. Why make him walk home 30 miles carrying a saddle?
This Budd Boetthicher/Randolph Scott project is overrated. I'll admit it's watchable and certainly has merit, but at the end of the day it's a middling movie riddled with faults.
As usual, I'll start with some positives:
- I'm a big Richard Boone fan and this no doubt one of his better parts. He's plays Frank Usher, the heavy, who is conflicted over his outlaw status and is especially unhappy with his lack of intelligent, honorable companionship.
- The plot pretty much makes sense from beginning to end, which is saying a lot for this type of movie. It moves along pretty well and maintains a good level of dramatic tension.
- Henry Silva is quite effective as "Chink", the outlaw band's stock crazy gunman. He played a similar kind of character a year later in "The Law And Jake Wade".
- The presence of Skip Homeir is interesting. He was the heavy in "The Gunfighter" five years earlier.
- Randolph Scott, as usual, is modestly effective as the leading man.
- This was shot almost entirely on location. There are very few sound stage scenes.
- Willard Mims, the cowardly bounder, is well characterized and the part is well acted by John Hubbard.
Here's some of the things that kept this movie from being better:
- In the opening scene, great pains are taken to deeply characterize a man and little boy who run a remote stagecoach station. Later in the day - about 15 minutes of move time later - they are brutally gunned down and their both their bodies are dumped in a well right in front of the station. Fortunately, this happens off camera. Nonetheless, this is extremely grisly and out of sync with the tone of the rest of the movie.
- Scott's Pat Brennan is the hero, but starts out the movie by riding 30 miles from his ranch to a place where he loses his horse in a foolish bet, forcing him to walk home. Is this the clever guy we are counting on to outwit the outlaw gang?
Also, about that bet. Wouldn't his former boss have allowed him to ride the horse he lost home, and return later with two horse? Or loan him a horse? The guy is trying to get Pat to come back to work for him. Why make him walk home 30 miles carrying a saddle?
- Attempts to make Pat Brennan seem like a super nice, friendly and easy going fellow fall very flat.
- The story is supposed to be set in New Mexico or Arizona and is clearly filmed in California.
- There's no way Pat Brennan would have allowed Frank Usher to mount his horse in the final scene. Every cowboy in the universe carries a rifle on his horse. Also, he would have not allowed Usher to walk away. He had murdered the little boy and man at the station, as well as his "buddy" the stagecoach driver. Pat didn't have to kill him to stop him, just shoot him in the leg.
- There is very little attempt at comic relief.
- No Indians, no Mexicans, no civil war references, some of the things I like to see referenced in Westerns.
- The ending is too abrupt. I guess the "guy got the girl" in the end, but this feels contrived.