The Bravados

Over Thanksgiving when I had the free preview of the Starz/Encore package of channels, StarzEncore Westerns ran The Bravados. It doesn't seem to be on DVD, but it's going to come up again on StarzEncore Westerns tomorrow at 1:00 AM (which is still late tonight out on the west coast) and again tomorrow night at 9:49 PM.

Gregory Peck plays Jim Douglass, who at the start of the movie is riding toward the town of Rio Arriba. He's stopped by a sheriff's deputy, who says that nobody's coming into town unless his name is Simms. Jim's name isn't Simms, of course, but you can't really stop the free movement of people in America, so eventually the deputy reluctantly backs down and lets Jim pass, although he's going to have to surrender his weapon at the sheriff's office for the duration of his stay.

The reason for all this security is that there are four men scheduled to hang the next day for having robbed the bank and killed a teller in the robbery. Everybody is scared that somebody is going to try to spring these men, which is why they didn't want to let Jim into town. As it turns out, Jim wants to see these men, but not with the purpose of breaking them out of jail.

In town, Jim runs into Josefa (Joan Collins), an old flame whose real purpose in the story is the exposition of Jim's back story to explain why he's in Rio Arriba now. After Jim split from Josefa, he married another woman and fathered a child by that woman. However, one day when Jim was away from his ranch, some men broke in, and raped and murdered Jim's wife. Jim has reason to believe that the four men to be hanged in Rio Arriba are the ones responsible for his wife's murder, although he didn't see the people who committed the crime.

As I mentioned earlier, the townsfolk are worried that somebody is going to try to free the four men, and sure enough, that happens in the form of Simms (future Stooge Joe De Rita), who is not the real Simms but an imposter. The four men run off with a hostage in tow, and a posse is set up to chase down the four men. Jim heads off with the posse, but of course, he has his own reasons for wanting to find the four men.

I've stated on several occasions that western's have never been my favorite genre, although I've also warmed up to them in the 11 years I've been blogging. With that in mind, my assessment of The Bravados is probably going to be slightly less charitable than that of anybody who's a fan of westerns. There's really nothing wrong with the movie, other than possibly Collins being given too small a role. Yet, to me, the movie felt almost interchangeable with any of the other psychological westerns of the 1950s.

Peck, of course, is the sort of actor that was especially well-suited for the role of someone like Jim Douglass, and he gives a professional turn here that's quite good. The four bad guys (Lee Van Cleef, Stephen Boyd, Henry Silva, and Albert Salmi) don't get as meaty characterizations, but that's because the script is about Jim's quest for revenge than about what the villains did. The cinematography is good, with nice color and as far as I could tell in the proper Cinemascope aspect ratio.

Western fans will certainly enjoy The Bravados, although I can't help but think there's a reason it's a relatively forgotten movie.