Richard Widmark, at the height of his career, plays a man who is past being conflicted, he has chosen his path and paid a heavy price.
He begins the movie on the run from a posse of four and the audience don't know why, as we watch the action unfold he manages to kill three deputies before the sheriff finally gets the better on him.
We learn he killed three men, brothers of the sheriff (at this point you might ask why doesn't the sheriff kill him outright, which they cover off by saying there is a reward of $1,000 for him alive but not dead, which is a little thin, but hey, it's a movie (Later you may wonder why the killing of the three deputies is never mentioned, as if perhaps killing deputies while resisting arrest doesn't count as murder, it's almost as if the three deputies are surrogates for the three brothers who are killed off screen before the movie begins, setting the posse on Widmarks trail).
Widmark and his captor fall in with a wagon train of devout Christians heading west looking for a clean start after the horror of the civil war. They take exception to the sheriffs sadistic treatment of Widmark and much character development ensues before a scuffle in which Widmark emphatically disposes of the sheriff, and he is eventually allowed to reveal that the sheriff's no account brothers raped and killed his Indian wife.
Most of the interaction between Widmark and the wagon train has been with the younger crowd, who are less set in their ideas, and now it is arranged for them all to be conveniently out of camp while the faceless horde of Indians massacre the adults.
Somehow Widmark survives, despite being attached to a wagon wheel that was pushed over a cliff... and he is left to try and lead the small group of youthful survivors to safety against overwhelming odds, while educating them in the ways of racial tolerance along the way, in between well staged action scenes involving manageable numbers of hostiles. So the characters undertake both a physical and a metaphorical journey if you will.
However the ending is pure Hollywood, explosives arrive to provide the great equaliser and a kindly judge sentences Widmark to spend the rest of his life in the custody of one of the nubile young women he has saved. Presumably they go off to live happily ever after (with her little brother) in Widmarks wigwam (although I think he had another term for the Indian tent dwelling).
The scenery is magnificent and our perspective of it is enhanced by the fact that much of the movie is set half way up the side of the mountainous valley where the action is set.
The Indians are used as a faceless plot device representing danger, however their historical plight is also well represented and advocated by Widmark, the white man who has lived long among them.
Review of The Last Wagon
