Man of the West

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Daniel C. M A more slowburn and philosophical western which raises some pretty interesting moral questions and is essentially a spiritual precursor to Unforgiven. Has great acting as you would expect from Gary Cooper and the rest of the crew with a good script and good fights. Also features a very good score. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 03/06/25 Full Review Leaburn O An entertaining, fairly short Western. Cooper is decent as usual London. Has one of the worst fight scenes in film history. Watched on Amazon Prime. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/25/25 Full Review Steve D One of Cooper's best westerns. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/07/24 Full Review Bill B A savage and tough film for its time. I always remembered Royal Dano's haunting final scene from when I was a youngster. All of the acting is superb, as is Anthony Mann's tight direction. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 08/14/23 Full Review William L When people refer to the time in which the West was dying, it wasn't like the continent was split in half and got sucked into a whirlpool; the lifestyle was changing with the arrival of the railroads and industry, and it was the people that made the West what it was that were forced to change with it. That's what Mann's film is about - evolution and change. Cooper's Link, a moderately reformed outlaw, is forced to determine whether or not his lifestyle changes are devout or mere posturing when confronted with his old gang. There's no theatrics, no moment of clear redemption, and essentially not an ounce of cheer in the entire runtime. Instead, you just get a man acting out of practicality, weighing his own survival, his willingness to inflict violence on others, and the potential to protect what few innocents are caught up in chance misfortune against one another. The audience is left wondering where the moral line is with Link, who is shown practically at his introduction (almost instictively, with some remorse) pilfering a pouch of money from an unsuspecting stable owner, and while he claims to be representing a town in which he has made a life honestly, it's only his word that backs that up. There's also the strange, volatile chemistry of the outlaw band to consider, led by Dock Tobin, an aging and increasingly eccentric relic of times with better pickings (played by Lee Cobb, an actor with considerable range who appeared in some all-time classics, most notably as the hot-tempered Juror #3 in 12 Angry Men). Some stay on out of blind loyalty, others out of familial ties, some out of deference to an almost animalistic pecking order. It's like watching volatile chemicals stored aboard a spaceship in a decaying orbit - inevitably doomed and potentially explosive. These are what's left of the romanticized outlaws of yesteryear - a squabbling, irrational pack. Their treatment of the sole female character of substance - London's Billie - is surprisingly brutal by the standards of '50s Westerns, and representative of their personalities as a whole. Taken together, it's a tight, violent, morose think piece on personal growth and environmental change, told through the less-than-squeaky-clean lens of Anthony Mann, in a film as close to a Revisionist Western as he ever got, and perhaps his best work. (4/5) Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 06/04/21 Full Review dustin d Man of the West is a dark Western (for 1958) taking on themes of masculinity, loyalty, the shadow personality and redemption. An underrated work of the genre. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Man of the West

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