Z/Web

A classic Western I’d never seen. Perhaps not quite as good as I expected, but excellent. A town’s Marshall retires and gets married. Minutes later he’s informed a killer he put away is returning to the town on the noon train. So the Marshall decides to stay and face him. His bride’s a Quaker and against violence, and she gives him an ultimatum: she will leave if he stays. He stays. During the time before the villains arrive, he sets out to recruit some deputies, but everyone in town is afraid of the killers and won’t help him. In the end he must face the killers alone. The gun battle is actually impressive: not a simple “fastest gun” shoot like you might expect, but a dodge-and-run shootout. Unfortunately, it takes place in the final five minutes of the film, and then the movie just ends. There’s no follow-up, no explanations, no finishing of the story. Nothing wrong with that—I just would have preferred more story—especially why the wife changed her mind. There was also a lot of history regarding the Marshall and why the town wouldn’t help him that was never made that clear. Sometimes that’s fine—the author wants us to think—but in this case I felt a lot of the ambiguity was there to make things seem mysterious and profound. In other words, depth is implied, but it’s not really there. Still, the film has a terrific atmosphere, superior acting, and a cool gunfight.

I’m not a fan of Animal House-type films and had no interest in seeing this, but it was doing big box office and there was little else in the theatre. I decided to check it out. It turned out it wasn’t as gross or vulgar as I expected, but more puzzling is that it isn’t very funny. I didn’t crack a smile until about 30 minutes in, and I only laughed a few times. It’s ponderous, plot-heavy, predictable, and the humor’s low-brow. Compared to this, Dumber and Dumber is a classic. Still, there are a couple good scenes, some interesting drama, a pleasant cast (How did they coerce so many good actors to this crap?) and handful of funny moments (my favorite was the 90-year-old frat pledge singing “Dust in the Wind” during the closing credits). But there’s basically ten minutes worth of material stretched into a 90-minute movie.