The Lusty Men

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The Lusty Men

1952

1h 53m

Western

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Tomatometer

Popcornmeter

100%

Tomatometer

17 Reviews

83%

Popcornmeter

250+ Ratings

In the American West of the 1950s, talented rodeo rider Jeff McCloud (Robert Mitchum) quits after an injury. Returning to his hometown, he gets a job on a ranch. He strikes up a friendship with Wes (Arthur Kennedy), a fellow ranch hand who dreams of being a rodeo rider. Wes talks Jeff into training him, and joins the rodeo circuit with the reluctant approval of his wife (Susan Hayward). But when the two men start to disagree, Jeff returns to the circuit himself.

Keith Phipps

The Dissolve

10/13/2014

4/5

Portrayed with Ray's usual sympathy for outsiders, the central threesome are decent, flawed romantics .

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Variety Staff

Variety

10/23/2007

A somewhat slow starter, once underway it is kept playing with growing interest under Nicholas Ray's firm direction.

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Time Out

06/24/2006

The story isn't much (the security of family life versus the rootlessness and danger of working as a rodeo rider), but the situation is rich in emotional resonances which Ray conjures into life convincingly.

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Jeffrey M. Anderson

Combustible Celluloid

02/20/2024

4/4

Nicholas Ray's beautifully layered, black-and-white rodeo picture.

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Jacques Rivette

Cahiers du Cinéma

06/07/2022

Nicholas Ray has always offered us the story of a moral dilemma where man emerges as either victor or vanquished, but ultimately lucid: the futility of violence, of all that is not happiness and which diverts man from his innermost purpose.

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Manny Farber

The Nation

11/25/2020

Mitchum is the most convincing cowboy I've seen in horse opry, meeting every situation with the lonely, distant calm of a master cliché-dodger.

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j f

@LiberteBurrows 07/07/2023

I’ve lusted harder a couple times this week. But it’s not bad.

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Russ G

11/02/2022

Robert Mitchum's the epitome of cool. An entertaining film, if a bit melodramatic, about a now gone way of life. I watched this as I don't think I'd seen Susan Haywood in anything before.

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12/05/2020

Rodeo settings and action. Love story is behind it. Good watching. Period piece that mentions Santa Fe, Tucson, Phoenix, and other rodeo hotspots in the American Southwest.

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anthony j

11/15/2020

Badly dated and filled with grainy old rodeo clips. Some decent acting but the emotion, or stiff lack thereof, over deaths, was jarringly weak and the ending predictable. A forgettable movie with a beat-it-to-death theme of rodeo being a tough, but addictive way of life. Okay, we GET it!

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05/27/2019

Robert Mitchum's treatment of Susan Hayward is the real story happening during this movie. Her complaints against Mitchum went all the way to the top of RKO -- but Hayward had been "borrowed" from Fox, and supposedly, "there wasn't much they could do about it." "Brutal Misogyny": a much better movie and true to life story. I enjoyed TCM's abbreviated version of Mitchum's bullying.

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07/08/2017

Robert Mitchum as rodeo cowboy.

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Nicholas Ray

Director

Susan Hayward

Louise Merritt

Robert Mitchum

Jeff McCloud

Arthur Kennedy

Wes Merritt

Arthur Hunnicutt

Booker Davis

Frank Faylen

Al Dawson

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Synopsis

In the American West of the 1950s, talented rodeo rider Jeff McCloud (Robert Mitchum) quits after an injury. Returning to his hometown, he gets a job on a ranch. He strikes up a friendship with Wes (Arthur Kennedy), a fellow ranch hand who dreams of being a rodeo rider. Wes talks Jeff into training him, and joins the rodeo circuit with the reluctant approval of his wife (Susan Hayward). But when the two men start to disagree, Jeff returns to the circuit himself.

Director: Nicholas Ray
Producer: Jerry Wald, Norman Krasna
Screenwriter: David Dortort, Horace McCoy
Production Co: Wald/Krasna Productions
Genre: Western
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Oct 24, 1952, Original
Release Date (Streaming): Mar 10, 2017
Runtime: 1h 53m

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