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Branson Reese

John Wayne called this the most unamerican film he’d ever seen so you know it’s good as hell

DallasFrance4.5

I hate when I go to the barber, settle back into the chair with the warm towel pressed against my face, then hear somebody building my coffin out back.

Josh Lewis4.0

A bit functional and lecture-y by design (is that Stanley Kramer's music?) rather than the more expressive lyricism of The Classics or the overwhelmingly doomed/depressed mood of the revisionists, but certainly a sturdy and handsome Hollywood backlot production that Gary Cooper lends some authentic weariness and loneliness to, and I love the concept of tracing a stripped-down real-time hour of a man reckoning with a town's history and people as it gives the film some naturally baked-in ticking time bomb tension. (So many clock shots!) There's a montage near the end of this for example that climaxes on an image of an empty chair that is filled with the weight and power of an action beat and it only works because of the way information is slowly doled out in these character conversations filled with resigned regret. Just good stuff, kinda wish there was more of it, and that they found a way to translate the clockwork patience and tight construction of the buildup to the actual action climax, which unfortunately feels a bit clumsy and rushed in comparison. Also by the end of the film I was literally singing "oh my daaaaaaarling" along with the theme so I guess it has to be a good movie, though.Funny to think about the fact that this generated such a McCarthy-era controversy about how communist and un-American its depiction of American townsfolk as cowardly/selfish and the cowboy hero as sadly sulking from room-to-room asking for help instead of being a macho one-man-army was at the time. Considering its ideas about individual moral courage and duty are ultimately so broad it feels like those people were just telling on themselves/projecting a bit, especially after decades of revisionist westerns (especially Italian ones that were far more radical) this honestly feels a bit quaint in retrospect in terms of its message movie bonafides. Though I do like the downbeat ending and the look of a mix of disgust and disappointment on Cooper's face that his friends he shares so much history with abandoned him in his time of need. ("For what? For nothing. For a tin star.") There's a beautiful poetry to the screenwriter being run out of Hollywood by many of his own friends for being a leftist, and now his movie is loved by Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Tony Soprano as a symbol of classic tough guy Americana.Full discussion on ep 320 of my podcast SLEAZOIDS.