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Fantastic!

A Disappointing Continuation

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Joel McRea (Dave) is asked by Veronica Lake (Connie) to protect her sheep-grazing land from town bully Preston Foster (Ivey) who wants it for his cattle. McRea recruits a gang that includes Don Defore (Bill) and they are heavily leaned on by Foster and his crew. Can McRea make a difference? The Ramrod referred to is McRea as Lake Veronica's central tough guy. Veronica herself is no shrinking flower in this. In fact, she's the opposite and ditches her glamorous looks. I only spotted one brief scene in which she was wearing make-up and she looked a completely different woman. The glamour role goes to Arlene Whelan (Rose) as McRea's girlfriend. Uh-oh, complications….looks like Lake is moving in on McRea as well.The cast are all good but unfortunately the film is chronically dull. Yawn, yawn….fall asleep….wake up….yawn…..nothing going on….fall asleep again…horses riding and a bit of shooting. There is nothing new about the story and it unfolds at a slow pace. Uninteresting. Shame.

This 1947 western in black and white could have been just another mediocre Joel McCrea piece of sagebrush like the dozens of Randolph Scott movies I've watched. The thing with Scott was that you had to watch a lot to find the few masterpieces. For me this was Joel McCrea's best film that I've seen yet, or certainly as good as Guns in the Afternoon (aka Ride the High Country) in which he teamed with Randolph Scott which always gets outstanding reviews. McCrea is the man of dignity, pretty much in the vein of Henry Fonda, who strides tall throughout the picture, unflinching in his view of the 'right thing to do'. It's what we've come to expect of him, but he carries it well and you just know he has that strength. What was surprising was the performance of the diminutive Veronica Lake of the iconic hair style, although you only get a glimpse near the beginning of it. Here (married to director Andre De Toth during the making of the movie) she gives a steely performance of some skill, using her sexual allure to persuade men around her to do things according to her will, and very convincing she can be. Don DeFore an actor I've not seen before, impresses as a friend to help McCrea when he's in trouble and I'm surprised with all the movies I've seen that he somehow escaped me. The great Donald Crisp, Charlie Ruggles, Ray Teal and Lloyd Bridges all appear in convincing roles. A tough, adult western I can highly recommend.

I won't comment on what has been written by several others here, regarding the noir-ish qualities of the material. I do want to mention some things that caught me off guard, in a very good way, from the moment the film began. First off, the writers and director de Toth were confident enough in their material not to spoonfeed their audience. Indeed, the first few minutes are so opaque it seems as if we may have come in in the middle of the film. In reality, we've come in in the middle, not of the film, but of the characters' lives, and the filmmakers allow us to figure out what's going on much as a stranger arriving in town would have to figure out what this drama is that's occurring around him. Adding to the intelligent and innovative approach to the story is the cinematography of Russell Harlan. Harlan, who shot Red River, Lust for Life, The Big Sky, and To Kill a Mockingbird, certainly knew how to place a camera and light a scene. For de Toth, Harlan's camera moves almost constantly, innumerable dolly shots (far more than in a typical film of this day) both reveal and obfuscate the settings in such a way as to keep the viewer always a little off-balance as to where the action is moving next. It's a skillful means of unsettling the viewer. The casting as well performs similarly. Joel McCrea is a familiar figure in Western leading roles, but here he's both a reformed drunk and so soft-spoken and comparatively passive as to be almost the antithesis of what we expect. Veronica Lake gets one soft scene with her hair down and almost peekabooing, but for the rest of the film it's up tight on her head, and she's up tight in the role. She's an interesting case, a pitiable femme fatale, a nice girl at first pushed then willingly galloping down the wrong road. Charlie Ruggles, typically a comic father type, here is stern but not heartless, wrongheaded but goodhearted. And the best piece of off-beat casting in the film is light comedian Don DeFore as the rascally, promiscuous, and deadly Bill, a gunman with a seductive smile and the grim good humor that one both fears and wants to protect. DeFore's performance is the best I've ever seen him give, and it made me wish he'd done more like this. Thankfully (and oddly), the script gives him plenty of screen time, much more in fact (toward the end) than one would expect, given that he's not the lead in the picture. There have been bad good-guys like Bill in scores of Westerns before and since, but few with the charisma and style that Don DeFore brings to this one. All in all, I was amazed by the complexity and shades of gray in this film, which I completely expected to be just another good old shoot-em-up. Well worth watching.

I looked this up on Comcast and the title suggested it might be interesting with a title that smacks of sexual symbolism. The description talked about cattle barons and a hard time, so I thought it might be another Brokeback Mountain.Well, it wasn't that at all It was about evil and out of control cowpokes. Joel McCrea (the ramrod) 1s the honest cowpoke who comes out of his drunken stupor after losing his family to find his own way. But his costar, Veronica Lake as Connie Dickason, steals the film as a strong-willed butch-type, who goes against the wishes of her rancher father Ben Dickason (Charles Ruggles) and refuses to marry his choice--the evil Frank Ivey (Preston Foster) and goes for a sheep man. GASP! Evidently, she wants someone she can whip.Well, somehow sheep boy skedaddles out of town and leaves his sheep ranch to his fiancée, who proceeds to fight daddy and Ivey.This is NOT a misogynist Bond movie! It is a western done by a Hungarian director, which had an interesting script with a lot more than you usually see in a cowboy movie.