Watch Decision at Sundown For Free

A Masterpiece!

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Randolph Scott is always enough to warrant high praise and a high rating, but he is backed up with one of his best casts and his best director, Budd Boetticher.Westerns often have revenge as a motive, but not very often in this vein.Also not often does a Scott-Boetticher Western have so few people with any redeeming qualities. Or, perhaps, so many people with few redeeming qualities.This is a true "adult" Western, with too many people acting from poorly thought-out plans and not very moral or ethical plans.The story, plot, characterizations are all first class, and the performers are all first rate, with some of the best Western performers here not even receiving credit.Bob Steele comes first to mind. He was always a good cowboy, and he became a top-quality actor the longer he was around. In "Decision," he has several appearances, always standing out, but never has a line.Guy Wilkerson was, to the best of my knowledge, never a name above the title, but here he has an important role, helping move the action along, helping frame the story, but, again, not given credit.Noah Beery, Jr, already a veteran by this filming, usually played such a sympathetic character the audience's liking spilled over to the actor. But beyond being sympathetic, he expressed emotions and attitudes beautifully. He was an actor!Karen Steele is billed third, but her character was never totally explained, through no fault of her own, and the fourth-billed Valerie French not only had a more fully fleshed out character, she portrayed it more vividly, with a superb performance of a strong and memorable woman.John Carroll too often played a cad or at least caddish character. He was a good-looking and very talented actor, and even a good singer, in earlier roles. He was, in fact, so good-looking and, even as a villain, sympathetic, sometimes it was hard to accept him fully as evil.One of the marks of a good movie is a large number of important characters, many performers with speaking parts. "Decision at Sundown" is crammed full of such, and all more than ably performed.Richard Deacon will probably always be best known as the hapless brother-in-law to the comedy performer on "The Dick Van Dyke Show," but he did much, much more, and well.James Westerfield, "Otis" the bartender, is another very familiar face, and nearly always a strong performer.Andrew Duggan was another good-looking guy and often a bad guy, but here he is as a sheriff, a strong and assured character.There are two director errors, one perhaps questionable, the other really inexcusable.Maybe three: Karen Steele is, again, as was so often true of films of that era, outrageously padded. On her it looked OK, not grotesque, but it was distracting and unrealistic.Scenery, cinematography, editing, and even the music score round out this excellent movie, which is available at YouTube. I recommend it.

Playing with the typical Randolph Scott-Ranown formula makes for an unsettling yet intriguing Western movie experience, a story about a good man out for the sort of vengeance that lessens him, even as he retains our rooting interest.Bart Allison (Scott) rides into the town of Sundown with one thing on his mind: Doing in the man that drove his wife to her death. As he rides in with his buddy Sam (Noah Beery, Jr.), we learn that this man, Tate Kimbrough (John Carroll) owns Sundown for all intents and purposes and has made many people there unhappy."Glad to hear he's doin' so well," Allison says of Kimbrough early on. "When a man's ridin' high, the ground comes up and hits him a lot harder when he falls."The trick of the movie is learning that Kimbrough's not the only person this sentiment applies to. Allison's been riding high himself on false notions of honor and justice that will leave him in a dark place indeed by film's end.Scott is a good guy in the film, but only barely. The opening scenes establish this well, when we see Allison stop a stage he's riding in at gunpoint. Is he holding it up? Randolph Scott? No, not quite, but he's establishing his character as an ornery, unreasonable cuss, not to mention a trifle too quick for his own good. He's supposed to be met when he stops the stage, but Sam's a bit slow, and there's an awkward moment where he's just standing there looking foolish while the others on the stage gawk at him which is kind of priceless.The John Wayne western "Rio Bravo" is sometimes described as an anti-"High Noon" film, but that idea seems more at home here. Like in "High Noon," the town of Sundown is established as a rancid sort of place, not only because of Kimbrough but for the people who tolerate his rule. Allison may be the lone figure of justice a la Gary Cooper in "High Noon," but is he the right man for the job of cleaning Sundown up?The early evidence indicates not. Confronting Kimbrough at the latter's wedding, he serves notice he plans to kill the guy, then runs away as Kimbrough's hired guns drive him and Sam into a livery stable, and lay siege.Sam can't believe his partner did such a fool thing. Even rattlesnakes give warning, an unruffled and vaguely amused Allison tells him."If they gave as much advance notice as you're giving that Kimbrough, rattlesnakes would be as out-of-date as them diny-ah- sores," Sam replies.Beery makes for a fine sidekick as always. Even better is Carroll as the film's heavy. Director Budd Boetticher always made sure he challenged Scott with a good bad guy, more complex than the usual ranch trash. Here, he lets us discover Kimbrough's bad side, a smooth operator who lets others do his dirty work, before turning the tables on us by showing he's not so vile in his way.Carroll made a career as a kind of B-movie Clark Gable, a cocksure ladies' man which he plays here, but here he invests Kimbrough with shades of, well, not exactly decency, but enough common sense to wonder what Allison's really up to. By the end of the film, you are rightly torn as to whether Allison's brand of vengeance is really in order."Decision At Sundown" may be too offbeat in its aims to earn a high place among the Ranown run. It's too unfocused in places, so intent on presenting Allison's complexities in a way Scott's down-the- middle characterization doesn't allow for. The action is too fitful, the relationships somewhat underserved, and the final scenes strain at a sort of significance everything else in the movie undercuts ("I'll tell you one thing, none of us will ever forget the day that Bart Allison spent in Sundown," a philosophizing town doctor explains at the end, which hardly seems to cover it.)Yet "Decision At Sundown" is a good movie for those who don't mind sacrificing a bit of the usual gunplay for a more probing examination of Western conventions. At under 80 minutes, it fills the time well enough, but its real strength is how it leaves you thinking after.

A very angry Randolph Scott and his sidekick Noah Beery Jr. ride into the town of Sundown. Everyone is abuzz about that day's wedding of it's most prominent citizen John Carroll, a man Scott has unfinished business with and ends up sparking a city-wide rebellion against.Another great collaboration between Scott and director Budd Boetticher, this offbeat and uncompromising western melodrama has a lot to say about the deadly sin of pride and the complications involving these two men afflicted with it.The climax and the final scene are really surprising and unique in that during the whole movie, it's Scott's pride that leads him to try and kill Carroll and it's that same pride that prevents him from carrying it through after Carroll's wounding by a third party.In the end, it's strange to see a western where the villain lives, leaving town with his head bowed, cured of his delusions of grandeur, while the hero wanders off in a drunken, blustery fit of anger, consumed bu his own self-righteousness.As with other films from Boetticher, this is visually stunning, with wonderful composition and great use of color. With most of the action taking place in town, there isn't much of Boetticher's usually well-photographed scenery, but the sets and costumes (especially Scott's cool leather jacket) look great.

This film pretty much maintains all its scenes within the town of Sundown, where Bart Allison (Randolph Scott) and his partner Sam (Noah Beery) arrive on the day of the marriage of Tate Kimbrough (John Carroll) to Lucy Summerton (Karen Steele). As such, it lacks the scenic outdoor beauty that a lot of 50s westerns took advantage of, and instead builds up a more or less interesting story behind the vengeful character played by Scott. The town of Sundown is under the control of Kimbrough who's marrying Lucy though his real girlfriend is Ruby James (Valerie French) who works at the saloon. The film is a little to staged but features a well drawn out gunfight where Scott and Beery are holed up in a livery stable while Kimbrough's men shoot out the windows from various strategic locations. For a western, Scott's role is quite extraordinary, and though you think all of the characters are stereotypes, the story expands enough to give them some interesting individuality.