Rate The Last Movie You Saw

A couple more Western video acquisitions...



The Big Country (William Wyler / 1958)
The Quick and the Dead (Sam Raimi / 1995)
The Proposition (John Hillcoat / 2005)
3:10 to Yuma (James Mangold / 2007)

The Big Country is a classic 1958 Western, one of those big Hollywood productions with a bit of a subversive streak. Gregory Peck plays a former sea captain named James McKay, who is about to marry Patricia Terrell (Carroll Baker), the daughter of powerful rancher Henry "The Major" Terrill (Charles Bickford), and gets caught up in a power struggle between Terrill and rival rancher Rufus Hannassey (Burl Ives). Charlton Heston plays Terrill's foreman Steve Leech, who becomes Jim's main rival for Patricia's affections. Jean Simmons plays Patricia's schoolteacher friend Julie Maragon, who holds the rights to yet another nearby ranch - now abandoned - called "The Big Muddy." Chuck Connors plays Buck, the no-good son of Rufus who (wrong-headedly) imagines that Julie fancies him. The movie deliberately undermines a lot of the expectations and conventions of the Western genre, mainly through Peck's lead character, who is an Easterner and an outsider to the West and who refuses to get pulled into the violent rivalry between the ranchers, or to be provoked by others into proving his own manhood through violence. All the principal actors are terrific, but in particular Ives as Rufus, who commands the screen every time he appears, starting from his introduction where he crashes a Terrill party with rifle in hand, delivering his ultimatum to Terrill.

The Quick and the Dead is splatstick horror maestro Sam Raimi's one and (so far) only Western, a very entertaining and kinetic homage to the Italian Westerns of the 1960's, in particular the work of Sergio Leone (although one can also detect the influences of Sergio Corbucci, Carlo Lizzani and Giulio Petroni.) Sharon Stone portrays a gunslinger who enters the town of Redemption, governed by a cold-blooded former outlaw named John Herod (Gene Hackman). She arrives just in time to enter the local fast-draw single-elimination shooting tournament, and it's Herod she has in her sights. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Herod's cocky son Fee, who imagines himself a faster draw than his father. Russell Crowe plays Cort, a former gunfighter who once rode with Herod but has renounced violence and become a preacher, arousing the ire of Herod. Overall, it's not one of the all-time great Westerns - even of the '90s - but it's a lot of fun. Hackman in particular is very impressive, further refining his tyrannical Western badman persona from Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992) - where he played "Little Bill" Daggett - which dates back all the way to the criminally underrated The Hunting Party (1971), where he played the vengeful rancher Brandt Ruger.

Third on the list is a Western of a decidedly different sort. The Proposition is set in the Australian outback during the 1880's and centers around the character of outlaw Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce), who is captured by the police along with his younger brother Mikey (Richard Wilson). The brutal yet thoughtful police captain Morris Stanley (Ray Winstone) makes a deal with Charlie, promising to free both him and Mikey if he succeeds in tracking down and killing his older brother Arthur (Danny Huston - son of John), who is wanted for rape and murder and is suspected of massacring the Hopkins family and torching their home. Emily Watson plays Captain Stanley's wife Martha, who was a friend of the Hopkins family. David Wenham plays Stanley's arrogant and very properly English supervisor Eden Fletcher. Tom Budge plays young Samuel Stoat, a member of Arthur's gang with a propensity toward violence as well as a singing voice to shame a nightingale. And John Hurt - just like Burl Ives in The Big Country - manages to steal just about every scene he's in as crusty bounty hunter Jellon Lamb. While The Proposition is certainly a brutal film at times, it's also extremely moving and often quite visually beautiful. It captures the feel of its particular time and place, also dealing with the troubled relations between the whites and the local Aboriginal people. One scene that stands out in particular is the scene where young Mikey is brutally flogged on orders from Fletcher, while on the soundtrack we hear the voice of young Samuel singing a beautiful a cappella rendition of folk song "Peggy Gordon."

And the last item is James Mangold's 2007 remake of Delmer Daves' 3:10 to Yuma from 1957. When I first saw TV ads for Mangold's film, I had no idea it was a remake of an older film. After all, the original, while certainly respected, wasn't necessarily a household name like High Noon (1952), Shane (1953) or The Searchers (1956). But I never get around to actually seeing either film until recently, when I got the Criterion Collection Blu-ray edition of the '57 original, and now I've just purchased the 4K UHD edition of Mangold's version. First of all, I think Mangold really opened up the story in a way that's very effective. More emphasis is placed on the actual journey to the town of Contention, which wasn't really dealt with in either the original Elmore Leonard short story or in Daves' film. This time around, Christian Bale plays rancher and Civil War veteran Dan Evans, who takes on the job of escorting captured outlaw leader Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) to a rendezvous with the train of the title, which will take Wade to Yuma Prison. Evans takes on the job primarily out of desperation, needing $200 to pay off his debts and save his home, but becomes ever more committed to getting Wade to his destination. Bale is perhaps even more effective in the role than Van Heflin was in the original, and Crowe is every bit as good (and as chilling) as Glenn Ford. Ben Wade is actually kind of the Hannibal Lecter of Western badmen. While Wade can certainly be ruthless and vicious and cold-bloodedly pragmatic, he's also well-read and has an artistic streak. And he has absolutely no trouble whatsoever in reading other people like an X-ray, assessing their strengths and weaknesses, knowing which buttons to push and knowing how to exploit their vulnerabilities. While I have a slight bias toward the '57 original, I think that Mangold's 2007 remake is also a strong film and strongly feel that it deserves to be regarded alongside of it and mentioned in the same breath. (BTW, the theme song in the 1957 original is sung by Frankie Laine. If you're of my particular generation, you probably know him best as the guy who sang the theme song of Mel Brooks' 1974 comedy Blazing Saddles with a completely straight face. Because of that, I've usually had a hard time taking him seriously whenever I hear his voice singing some Western theme song. But so invincibly gorgeous is the theme song to the original 3:10 to Yuma that it's the one time I don't laugh at Frankie Laine.)