Cast a Long Shadow

For whatever reason, when I've had free preview weekends on DirecTV, one of the channels I haven't recorded all that much despite the present of older movies is StarzEncore Westerns. One of the few movies that I did record off the channel is Cast a Long Shadow. It's going to be on StarzEncore Westerns several times over the next week, starting tomorrow morning at 8:25 AM.

Audie Murphy plays Matt Brown, who at the start of the movie is in a saloon somehwere in Mexico, since he's playing poker for peso stakes despite not having a gun, and drinking heavily. A man comes into the saloon looking for Matt just in time for a fight to break out, and is thankfully able to help Matt.

That man is Chip Donohue (John Dehner), who has been the foreman on the Keenan ranch in New Mexico. Keenan recently died and left the ranch to Matt because Matt is technically his son, even though everybody knows that there is some question of Matt's parentage and he feels like he doesn't even have his own name, which is what led to his leaving the ranch years ago and leading the dissolute life he's led. Donohues informs Matt that the people working the land have chipped in and are willing to buy the spread for a substantial sum, which Matt should probably take since he knows nothing about running a ranch. They just have to draw up all the paperwork at the ranch.

Matt accepts at first, and everybody else seems suspiciously happy, as though this is all some sort of trick to get Matt off the land, even though $20,000 was nothing to sneeze at back in the day. And considering the way people treat Matt at the ranch, you can forgive him for wondering if there's something going on. Even though he now technically owns the ranch, he can't really go into his father's office and sit at the desk and really feels like he runs it. One other thing that makes Matt think about changing his mind is the presence of pretty Janet Calvert (Terry Moore). She and Matt had a relationship of some sort before Matt left, and now Matt is thinking of resuming that.

There's a bigger problem, however, which is that in the time Donohue was looking for Matt, news reached the ranch that Keenan had been borrowing heavily using the ranch as collateral, and not been paying back the loans. The bank would understandably like those loans paid back, and is planning on foreclosing if the loan isn't paid off in the very near future. So if Matt sells the settlers won't own the place, and if Matt doesn't sell he'll lose it to the bank.

Except that there is one way out, which is to drive a bunch of cattle to Santa Fe and sell them, using the money to pay off the loans. This will also give Matt the chance to finally be what the western movie stereotype expects a "real" man to be by leading the cattle drive. The only problem is that it's going to require a lot of help and hard work, and Matt decides that he needs to enforce such strict discipline that it causes Matt so fire some of the ranch hands from the drive for things like drinking. They figure they'll sabotage the drive.

There's a lot of interesting ideas in Cast a Long Shadow, but unfortunately it doesn't quite come together particularly well. It felt to me as though there were a lot of loose ends, as well as things that were resolved way too quickly. The movie was also in black and white, where I felt color would really have helped it. Audie Murphy is professional but it's in service of fairly pedestrian material.

As far as I could tell, Cast a Long Shadoe isn't available on DVD.