Watch The Proud Ones For Free

Very disappointing...

hyped garbage

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

THE PROUD ONES – 1956A much better than I was expecting western from the middle of the heyday of the genre.Robert Ryan is a lawman in a railhead town at the end of the cattle trail. He tries to play fair with everyone, and tells the just arrived cowhands etc to behave themselves. It they cause no trouble, they will not get any from Ryan and his deputies, Walter Brennan and Arthur O'Connell.Ryan is keeping company with Virginia Mayo, who runs a boarding house in town. He is finally going to pop the question and ask for her hand in marriage. This happy turn of events is soon interrupted by the return of several past problems.First is the son, Jeffery Hunter, of a gunslinger Ryan had killed some years before. The son is looking for maybe a little payback. He has heard that Ryan had gunned his father when the man was unarmed. Hunter wants to decide if Ryan is indeed a back shooter. The second, and bigger problem, is the new saloon and gambling hall owner, Robert Middleton. Middleton, who goes by the unlikely name of "Honest John Barrett" runs anything but a honest set-up.It does not take long before Ryan catches a card sharp in Middleton's saloon, doing a bit of underhand card playing. Ryan runs the card sharp out of the place. One of Middleton's guns goes for Ryan from behind. Hunter, who is having a beer, shouts out a warning to Ryan. The gun hand puts one in Hunter's leg and grazes Ryan in the head before Ryan drops the four flusher.Ryan has Hunter put up at Miss Mayo's place to heal up. Ryan intends to ride close watch on Middleton's action. The deal with the two is that there is bad blood between them. The two had squared off in a different cow town before. Ryan had left that burg because his girl, Mayo had asked. Middleton had mistakenly taken this as cowardice on Ryan's part. Another twist is that Hunter's father was in Middleton's employ when he bought it.Hunter recovers and is given a job as a jailer by Ryan. Ryan sits the kid down and tells him that his dad was a low-life gunman. Hunter does not like hearing this but can see that Ryan seems to have the respect of the town.The one deputy, Arthur O'Connell, quits in order to be with his with child, wife. Hunter is offered the job, which he takes. Ryan is slowly filling up the jail with Middleton's crew as they get caught rolling winners at the table etc. The pit boss at Middleton's saloon, George Mathews kills a man for calling him a cheat. Ryan adds him to the jail house residents. Middleton has had enough of Ryan and sends for his two best guns, Ken Clark and Rodolfo Acosta.Adding to Ryan's problems is that the head wound he got earlier is causing bouts of 2 or 3 minutes of blurred vision. This of course he keeps to himself. Clark and Acosta make a late night play at bushwhacking Ryan on his rounds. Ryan has to run for it as a bout of blurred vision hits.The next night he takes Hunter along on his rounds. Acosta makes another play at Ryan. This however ends with Acosta getting some unneeded changes to his breathing process. Acosta's partner, Clark, does not like this and grabs a few of Middleton's men for a raid on the jail house. They free Mathews etc and kill guard Brennan.Ryan hears the shooting and comes a running. He finds Hunter exchanging shots with Clark, Mathews and bunch. Ryan and Hunter chase the villains into a large barn on the edge of town. There is a long gun battle during which Ryan has another bout of blindness. He also catches a round in his gun arm. Hunter though is up to the task and the gunmen are soon ready for Boot Hill.All that remains is to put the pinch on ringleader Middleton. Middleton is not inclined to go peacefully and goes for a hidden gun. Hunter is not fooled by the move and puts Middleton down for the count. Ryan and Mayo ride off to start a new life and Hunter is the new town lawman.Also in the cast are Edward Platt, Fay Roope, Richard Deacon and Whit Bissell.The director was Robert D. Webb. Webb was a long time second unit man whose films after making the move to main chair, include, THE GLORY BRIGADE, THE SPIDER, WHITE FEATHER, BENEATH THE 12 REEF, GUNS OF THE TIMBERLAND and Elvis's first film, LOVE ME TENDER.The look of the film is just what one would expect from top notch cinematographer, Lucien Ballard. Ballard lensed, HOUSE ON TELEGRAPH HILL, FIXED BAYONETS, BERLIN EXPRESS, DON'T BOTHER TO KNOCK, THE GLORY BRIGADE, INFERNO, THE KILLER IS LOOSE, BUCHANAN RIDES ALONE, CITY OF FEAR, NEVADA SMITH, WILL PENNY, HOUR OF THE GUN, TRUE GRIT, THE WILD BUNCH and THE GETAWAY.The film features a rather subdued and haunting theme from Lionel Newman.Ryan is Ryan. Did he ever turn in anything but a great performance? Hunter is good while a mustache wearing Brennan is at his scene stealing best in his limited screen time.Unlike most westerns, this one is not set out in the big spaces. It instead makes great use of the town as the backdrop for all the gun-play and double dealing. Most of the action takes place at night which works quite well.

A cattle drive from Texas arrives at its destination in a town in Kansas. This sets off a wave of price gouging to take as much advantage as possible of the new business. Virginia Mayo runs a restaurant and Robert Middleton is set to open a new saloon. Marshall Robert Ryan comes face to face with the past in both Middleton and the cowboy son of a gunslinger (Jeffrey Hunter) who believes that Ryan gunned down his father in cold blood in the previous town he was a marshal in. The film is pretty good at showing the avariciousness of the merchants, who are willing to let law and order slide in order to profit from the business. Do they want law and order or wild and uncivilized profiteering led by the crooked Middleton and his gunslingers? It's a good question and the film could have been a whole lot better with a script that made more sense, especially for the beautiful Mayo, who's character is trapped in a stereotype.

"Beneath the 12-Mile Reef" director Robert D. Webb's western shoot'em up "The Proud Ones" is a solid, well-made, and highly underrated oater that stars Robert Ryan as a leathery tough town marshal, Jeffrey Hunter as an indecisive cowhand, and Virginia Mayo as Ryan's spitfire girlfriend. "The Proud Ones" anticipated later films such as Anthony Mann's "The Tin Star" (1957), Sam Fuller's "Forty Guns," Sergio Corbucci's "Minnesota Clay" (1965), Don Siegel's "Death of a Gunfighter" (1969), and Fernando Baldi's "Blindman" (1971). Webb doesn't waste a moment in this tightly helmed western drama that deals with a familiar theme in most oaters: an older man takes a younger one under his tutelage and shows him the ropes about how to survive as a lawman and how to handle a six-gun. Predictably, the younger man doesn't trust the older man and that generates half of the drama in "The Proud Ones." Clocking in at a minimal 94-minutes, this Twentieth Century Fox sagebrusher penned by Academy Award winner Edmund H. North of "Patton" and "Guns of the Timberlands" scenarist Joseph Petracca slights the villain and the heroine. Robert Middleton is a worthwhile villain and he poses a clear and present danger to our hero, but we don't get nearly enough scenes where he connives against the protagonist. In other words, Middleton doesn't make near enough an impression. Meantime, Virginia Mayo doesn't garner enough screen time either as our hero's headstrong girlfriend. Composer Lionel Newman contributes a richly atmospheric orchestral soundtrack that is distinguished by a pre-Ennio Morricone whistling theme. Veteran western lenser Lucian Ballard adds to the credibility with his artful widescreen compositions that give this western a quiet dignity. The supporting cast is fleshed out by many familiar faces, among them Walter Brennan in a pre-"Rio Bravo" role as a wise old deputy; Arthur O'Connell as a nervous, expectant father, Whit Bissell as a yellow livered townsperson, Ken Clark and Rudolfo Acosta as murderous killers; Edward Platt as the town doctor, George Mathews and I. Stanford Jolly as crooked card dealers.Basically, a hard-as-nails Kansas town marshal, Cass Silver (Robert Ryan of "Flying Leathernecks"), has to keep a town tamed after his old nemesis 'Honest John' Barrett (Robert Middleton of "The Law and Jake Wade") opens a saloon/gambling house and imports a couple of trigger-happy gunslingers to raise Cass' blood pressure. The first of the cattle herds are showing up in town and the merchants are taking advantage of their future customers by raising prices on everything, including haircuts. Complications arise when Cass has to blast one of Barrett's quick-tempered men in a saloon gunfight and a bullet nicks him on the left temple so that his vision blurs at the worst moments. Meanwhile, if blurry sight is enough for our clench-jawed hero to contend with, a cowpoke, Thad Anderson (Jeffrey Hunter of "The Searchers"), rides into town with a cattle herd and keeps two guns buckled across his hips. It seems that Anderson's no-good father worked as a hired gun for Barrett in another town and Silver had to plug him. Barrett has generated a persuasive rumor that Silver gunned down Anderson' father in cold blood and Anderson wants to know the truth.Jeffrey Hunter has the plum role as Anderson, largely because he hasn't made up his mind which side of the law that he intends to stay on. Never quite completely until the end of the action does Anderson trust Cass Silver. It is a testimony to Robert Ryan's ability as a leading man and a character actor that he comes off as a marshal who is prepared to do things that most lawmen wouldn't do. During a street showdown, he blasts a gunmen who appeared to be unarmed but had concealed a derringer in his jacket. Later, Anderson pulls the same stunt, shooting down a man at a saloon bar who appeared to all intensive purposes to be unarmed. These two scenes raise "The Proud Ones" above average. "The Proud Ones" isn't one of those westerns with unrealistic expectations. The suspicion on behalf of the townspeople that Cass Silver might be a mite unhinged in his behavior foreshadows Siegel's later western "Death of a Gunfighter." The big gundown in a barn at the end bristles with thrills, too, as Silver confronts his Achilles' heel when his sight goes bad, he loses his revolver, and he must depend on Anderson. "The Proud Ones" is an unheralded western that deserves more positive critical recognition.

Another great performance by the vastly underrated Robert Ryan. The entire film has a nuanced and adult tone, completely lacking from Rio Bravo, which seems to be a rip-off by Hawks. This film belongs in the company of High Noon, The Ox-bow Incident and damn few other Westerns for the intelligence and seriousness of the script. Ryan's performance alone makes this film watchable and undated, 50 years after. How many other films can say that? Also worth mentioning are the performances of Virginia Mayo as a hard headed business woman, and Walter Brennan. Brennan with hardly any lines of dialog, manages to do more with a newspaper for a prop, and with looks between him and Ryan, then most actors can do when they're chewing the scenery.