Well Deserved Praise

Memorable, crazy movie

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

NOTES: A top box-office success in the U.S.A./Canada, the film also took big money in Australia.COMMENT: The last of the six collaborations between director Anthony Mann and actor James Stewart was also Columbia's fourth CinemaScope feature (after The Violent Men, The Long Gray Line and Three for the Show). Perhaps producer and director recognised weaknesses in the storyline and rightly thought these could be well disguised on the wide-wide screen. Certainly there are any number of spectacular and often dramatic vistas of rugged New Mexican landscapes. These often serve not just as atmospheric backdrops to the action, but as part and parcel of the action itself. The action spots, which are many, are presented in a brutally realistic fashion. Coupled with sharp film editing and a lean camera style (the camera rarely moves, but when it does, it tracks or pans with great effectiveness and dynamism), the plot moves ahead with such pace and fluidity that few audiences will notice any inconsistencies in either the story or characters. It is entirely the actors who are forced to carry the burden of weak and inconsistent motivations. Mostly, they manage to bring their characters to life either by blustering (Nicol, Kennedy) or simply by exercising their personal charisma (Stewart, Crisp). But, though we like her, Cathy O'Donnell often seems hard-pressed to make her reluctant storekeeper believable. Fortunately, while she often seems out of place, this is an appropriate reaction, but her behaviour still comes across as too strange and unpredictable to convey complete acceptance of her performance. She is not helped by over-emphatic make-up and prissy costuming which contrasts too sharply with Stewart's generally dishevelled and sloppy demeanor. (Stewart is a cavalry captain? He looks more like a perennially out-of-luck desert rat). Fortunately the script is so action-packed, and so forcefully directed and staged on that expansive CinemaScope canvas (I believe all the many ruggedly impressive exteriors were shot on actual locations in New Mexico), that The Man from Laramie, despite all the extra weight in his saddle-bags (including a ridiculous title tune), is one cowpoke in the tradition of quiet, laconic strangers in town that stands proud above the rest.OTHER VIEWS: Early "psychological" western that still impresses audiences as much in 2004 as it did on first release. True, we tend to notice the clichés of the "B"-western dialogue, the ludicrous stock characters and the sententious title song more than we did when psychological overtones were a novelty. True too, we tend to grate on the ripe hamming (especially by Alex Nicol, though the rest of the cast including even James Stewart are not exempt) and the embarrassing mis-casting of Cathy O'Donnell, more than the long tracking shot as Stewart advances on Nicol or the splendid dolly as Crisp charges at Stewart. Still, nothing can defeat from the grandeur of the early CinemaScope scenery and Mann is just the director to take full advantage of it. -JHR writing as George Addison.

James Stewart departs from his usual nice guy image to play an army officer on leave in director Anthony Mann's violent western "The Man from Laramie" who is searching for the men who killed his younger brother. Generally, most westerns are photographed against either stunning desert or mountain scenery with the characters on horseback riding leisurely through the terrain. In "The Man from Laramie," the actors had to be accomplished horsemen because Mann has them riding through some pretty treacherous scenery. In other words, the characters aren't hoofing it down worn trails. This adds a sense of authenticity to the action because we can clearly see the actors atop their horses. Lenser Charles Lang captures all the action in immaculate close-ups, medium shots, and long shots, and brings out the spectacular quality of Cary Odell's art direction and James Crowe's set decoration. During his robust, 30-year, Hollywood career, Mann helmed his share of memorable horse operas, approximately 11, along with several notable film noir thrillers, including "Raw Deal," "T-Men," and "He Walked by Night." James Stewart and he teamed up in 1950 and made "Winchester '73" and then went on and collaborated on three more sterling westerns: "Bend of the River," "The Naked Spur," and "The Far Country." "The Man from Laramie" qualifies as a grim yarn about revenge. Somebody has been running guns to the Apaches, and those same Apaches have massacred a cavalry patrol led by Will Lockhart's brother. Lockhart takes a leave of absence and poses as a freight wagon driver to investigate Coronado, the town close to where his brother died. Alec Waggoman (Oscar winning Best Supporting Actor Donald Crisp of "How Green My Valley Was") rides herd over Coronado. Indeed, he owns everything three days' ride around Coronado, but he isn't a happy cattle baron. He has grown old, but he has been gradually losing his eyesight, a fact that he has concealed from ranch foreman Vic Hansbro (Arthur Kennedy of "Desperate Journey") and his pampered, sadistic son Dave (Alex Nicol of "The Savage Guns") who has no sense of honor. Secretly, Alec wishes that Vic had been his son instead of Dave. As the action unfolds, Will Lockhart (James Stewart of "Bandolero!") has hired men to shovel salt. Initially, Lockhart was told by Barbara Waggoman (Cathy O'Donnell of "Side Street") that the salt out in the desert was free to anybody who had the courage to dig it. The salt flats lay within the area where reckless Apache warriors rode without a qualm for killing white men. While Lockhart's crew is excavating the salt, rides from the Barb thunder in, lasso and drag Lockhart in front of his men, burn their wagons, and kill their mules. They leave an adequate number of mules for Lockhart and his men to ride back to Coronado. Dave launched this unmitigated attack on Lockhart and they have a running feud throughout "The Man from Laramie." Eventually, Dave catches Lockhart out rounding up cattle for another ranch that have strayed onto Barb territory and they shoot it out. Lockhart wounds Dave in the hand. Dave's riders thunder up to his rescue and surround Lockhart. A crazed Dave orders them to hold Lockhart, and Dave shoots Lockhart in the hand at point blank range. "You scum!" cries Lockhart in agony.Eventually, we learn the identities of the dastards who plan to run Winchester repeating rifles to the Apaches. This is a thoroughly engrossing western despite the many alterations that scenarists Philip Yordan and Frank Burt made for the sake of spontaneity to Thomas T. Flynn's superb western novel. For example, the burned wagons at the salt flats had been destroyed by the Apaches, but this was not the setting for the cavalry massacre. A man runs the general store in the novel and he is courting Barbara in the misguided notion that their marriage will assure him a place in the Waggoman dynasty. Another big change occurs in the character of Vic Hansbro. He is a bigger, meaner foreman than the one that Arthur Kennedy plays. In the novel, Lockhart and he have a knock-down, drag-out fistfight in Coronado.Altogether, if you crave westerns, "The Man from Laramie" is a surefire sage for you. Alex Nicol gives a top-notch performance as the sadistic son and his body language tells us everything that we need to know about his horribly flawed character. Donald Crisp lends sturdy support as the cattle baron who wants to own all the property in the area.

In the course of trying to find the people who traded guns to the Apache (who used them to kill his kid brother), Will Lockhart falls foul of psycho Dave Waggoman and, by proxy, Dave's rich rancher father and kind of adoptive quasi-brother Vic.I somehow managed to never see this classic western until now. It features James Stewart in one of his iconic roles, and it looks great, with glorious widescreen colour locations. The story, which draws on King Lear, is relatively straightforward, albeit there are some threads which are never fully explored (Will and Barbara), some which are so obvious they might usefully have been avoided, and some - especially Dave's storyline - which get what, in my view, were lamer payoffs than they merited.I feel awful for criticising a classic western, but its strengths vastly outweigh its weaknesses, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

This tale of revenge and family dynamics in the Southwest is lifted above the routine by a couple of elements. The location shooting in New Mexico is nicely done. There are a couple of stand-out scenes. And most of the important performances are splendidly executed.Anthony Mann and Jimmy Stewart made a number of Westerns in the post-war period that were unusual in that they revealed a sort of neurotic rage in Jimmy Stewart, previously best known for being a simple nice guy on the screen. A startling intensity began showing through his performances beginning with "It's A Wonderful Life (1946)." Whether his experiences during the war had anything to do with it or whether he was making a career move to break out of stereotyped roles, we don't know. Maybe both.In any case Anthony Mann's direction seemed to provide a channel for Stewart's rage. This is a brutal movie. More than that, it was shocking at the time of its release. It was unnerving to see someone shoot a dozen mules on the screen, for instance, and Stewart's reaction to the slaughter underlines the horror. Later there is a prolonged and graphic fist fight between Stewart on the one hand and Alex Nicol and Arthur Kennedy on the other. And, most terrible of all, a scene in which Nicol deliberately and at close range shoots a hole through captive Stewart's outstretched palm. With each outrage, Stewart is as adept at registering pain as fury.I'm going to skip over the family dynamics because they're a little complicated, though accessible to adults, and a little overdrawn. There are some women involved but they're dispensable. Everyone gets what's more or less coming to him.Alex Nicol does a fine job as the spoiled, power-hungry, narcissistic son of Donald Crisp, the old rancher who "owns this country." The problem with Nicol's role is that it's one dimensional. He has no redeeming qualities whatever, and we know from the moment he plugs Stewart's hand that he's dead meat, no matter what else happens.The same can't be said for Arthur Kennedy as the devoted surrogate "son" whose position as heir to the ranch is very fragile. But Kennedy's forte is projecting indignation -- as in "Why are you DOING this to me?", and he does it superbly, better than anyone else active on the screen during this period. And he makes his filial loyalty, his love, for Old Man Crisp believable, even touching in its abjectness.This was the last film Anthony Mann and Jimmy Stewart made together. Stewart opted out partly because he felt he was moving from one stereotype (the nice guy) into another (the neurotic cowboy). He made another movie along similar lines, "Night Passage" (1957), but it seemed an imitation of what Mann and Stewart had been doing together earlier.