Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

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

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Nursed back to health from a broken leg by the residents of a small US town, an American-born illegal arms dealer becomes torn between whether to return to Mexico, where he has lived most of his life, or stay on in America in this Technicolor western starring Robert Mitchum. As it turns out, Mitchum has quite some history, residing in Mexico to avoid being arrested for avenging his father's murder, yet with so many welcoming him with open arms, offering him jobs and declaring that he should stay "this side of the river... where you belong", Mitchum soon finds himself in quite a dilemma. The title is intentionally ambiguous; it is never clear whether the USA or Mexico is meant to be the wonderful place. The plot is not really helped though by the inclusion of Julie London as a love interest in the town. She is married and it is hard to root for Mitchum when he convinces her that she must not really love her husband on account of a few glances. London is pretty dull too, and then as a self-defense incident forces Mitchum to make up his mind between the US and Mexico, it feels a case of too much being thrown on the plate here. The film's best moments are the quieter ones in which Mitchum sits and genuinely ponders over which side to join. There are enough of these moments to keep the film chugging along, but it is a little hard to enthusiastically recommend it.

This is a film for those who wish to understand the Mitchum mystique. I first saw this film with my father when Bill Kennedy was still on Channel Nine in Canada. It has something for everyone; even the dignified and yet realistic presence of Leroy 'Satchel Page' as Buffalo Soldier Tobe Sutton. It's about a tough guy who finds himself vulnerable at all the wrong times and reluctantly must depend on the care of others when he least expects it.Some men, like Clint Eastwood of the Mount Rushmore School and more famously, Marlon Brando, are great at understatement and know how to make it work for them. Mitchum, with his sleepy-eyed 'I'm just here to get my paycheck' attitude is at the top of this heap. He does his job, no more or less, but that is what makes him such a great working-class hero. Mitchum does his job, and every once in awhile, like Bettie Page or Ernest Hemingway, he will flash you a little something extra. No charge. It's on the house.I first saw this film in black and white and later in color. I was surprised to find my appreciation of it has grown over the years and it does not seem a bit dated. It's a simple story, really, with about the complexity of a good short story. The intriguing thing is I cannot tell you why exactly it has stuck in my mind with such fondness. That in itself suggests a touch of great artistry.Alex North conducts a rousing score that suggests the best of Mexican music. The cinematography by Floyd Crosby and Alex Phillips seems even more appealing in color than it was in black and white when I viewed it again with my cousin James Arthur. It's a man's movie with a bit less romance than Bogart's THE LEFT HAND OF GOD, but every time I see it the movie seems to be spot on in all the right places. There is nothing baroque about the presentation of events and the story never props itself up on anything bordering sensationalism. Like Mitchum's acting, it is what it is, take it or leave it.But I think you will take it in the end. This movie has one of the best resolutions I have ever seen in a Western. After the last gunfight, you KNOW this chaos and nonsense in violence has come to an end the way a baseball game concludes with a walk off home run and Mitchum giving a clinic on how to put a bullet through the impulse to break out into tears with classic manly disconnection as one of the great natural actors of our time. I have seen this ending several times over the years and like the ending to '2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY', cannot tell you exactly why it is so poignant to me. Besides the treat of seeing the Baseball legend Satchel Paige in a movie and Julie London being easy on the eyes, and a host of venerable Latinos being sympathetically cast in supporting roles or as villains with sneering machismo, there is Mitchum swaggering through with that 'I don't give a damn' disinterest finally giving a damn at the end without saying a word.

Robert Mitchum is peculiarly cast as a mangy Mexican-American varmit (via Missouri!) causing trouble in a tiny bordertown near Texas who breaks his leg and is taken in by an American doctor; the Texas Army offers Mitchum a job, but a gunfight at a party causes Bob to take it on the lam. Static adaptation of a book by cult western-writer Tom Lea has disappointing outdoor cinematography and a half-realized illicit-romance sub-plot involving Julie London as an ex-shady lady (London has a pretty but placid, peculiar face that doesn't take to the camera right away, and she's not directed nor photographed with much care). The Alex North score is overused, and there are endless clichéd shots of a lone horseback rider against the open sky. The climactic moments are strong, and Mitchum does get a handful of scenes where he's able to break out of the formula mold and do some genuine acting. ** from ****

I think this movie is one of the better movies I'v seen and I have seen a lot of movies in my life time. I really like some of the lines in the movie. Like close to the end of the movie. They Martin Brady and Helen Colton are sanding next to the wall of a old mission talking to each other about what they had done. Helen make's the remark that she is ashame of the feelings she has for Brady knowing that her husband is not in the ground yet. Brady replies by saying what we did may have been wrong but the feelings they have for each other are not. Helen replies to him. Is'n it a pity then that life is what we do and not what we feel. At the last part when Brady had to shoot his horse named Tears. That got to me as I had a small dog and I loved her much. I had to put her down, her name was Tears. Maybe I'm just a old corn ball from the pass. But some movies and the words in them get inside of me. I like that. They will always be apart of me and my life.