Man of the West

Buy This Item Man of the West by United Artists  Available from Amazon  $11.19  on 9-21-2008     Western auteur Anthony Mann and aging Western icon Gary Cooper team up in this stark tale of a trio of train passengers stranded in the middle of the desert after a railway holdup. Taking responsibility for his helpless compatriots (Julie London as a sad-eyed prostitute and Arthur O'Connell as a garrulous but cowardly banker), craggy-faced Link Jones (Cooper) takes them into a veritable viper's nest in a desperate gamble. It turns out the respected town elder is a former member of the outlaw gang that robbed them, and he's welcomed back by patriarchal gang leader Dock Tobin (Lee J. Cobb) like the prodigal son. The other bandits are not so forgiving but humor the old man while plotting to unmask Cooper as a devious traitor in a battle of wits and wills. Mann returns to his favorite themes of family and betrayal with a dramatic twist and wrenches up the jagged conflict with the most spare imagery of his career: the trio hiking down an endless horizon of empty track, a lone ramshackle shack on the arid plains, the desolate ghost town where Tobin's planned bank heist turns out to be a pathetic fantasy. Mann's taut direction creates a tension that hangs in the air like the sword of Damocles over the stranded travelers and explodes in cruel, raw violence. Reginald Rose (<I>12 Angry Men</I>) wrote the literate if sometimes overly symbolic script, and John Dehner, Jack Lord, and Royal Dano costar as Tobin's angry gang members. <I>--Sean Axmaker</I> Reader Reviews A classic western and one of Mann's greatest films [film noir or western, and perhaps best thought of as a film noir stuffed into the mold of the western]. Great script, wide open scenery, widescreen Cinemascope photography, great soundtrack, a 'narly Gary Cooper, and assorted nasty character actors. View it not only as a straight ahead western narrative, but also as a metaphor for any man seeking redemption from a twisted past. The Tobin gang is Link's "family" [he is literally the link between evil (his past with them) and good (his current domesticated life and hoped for future)], and the story is that of his attempted escape and redemption as he rebels against this family's history of violence and criminality. A redemption that coincidently involves the eventual extermination of the family involving multiple fratricides followed by the ultimate, partricide. The final shoot out with his "cousin" Claude is is one of the best scenes in the Western film genre. Simply reflect on the classic line after Claude is shot (again for the third or fourth time, and delivered in a moan dripping with regret): "...it could have been so different...". Perhaps the ultimate statement regarding the individual's attempt to escape his/her past, fate, and, in this case, certainly, a monstrously dysfunctional family of range roving psychopaths. The "rape" of mad dog "brother" Jack Lord (say it ain't so Dan-O!) is thrown in as a bizarre twist in this festival of Freudian bloodletting - I can only imagine the unsettling feeling that 50's audiences had when viewing the spectacle of this brother on brother trist - no wonder the film did not go down well at the time of its release. Doc Tobin's last line before he shuffles off to big sky country sums up both the ending of the film and the beginning of the end of the Western genre. The Wild Bunch is just a decade away.

Man of the West Available from Amazon Price: $11.19 Updated on 9-21-2008.

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