The Good Guys and the Bad Guys

I'd been writing up posts in advance and scheduling them as soon as I copy them over to Blogger, but then I noticed that one of the movies I've got in my queue is one that just so happens to be coming up on TCM again soon, so if anything looks like it's not quite accurate in terms of dates or if two posts come up in rapid succession, that would be the reason why. Anyhow, the movie that I notice was on the TCM schedule again is The Good Guys and the Bad Guys, which has its next TCM showing on July 11 at 12:30 PM.

Robert Mitchum plays the good guy, a man named Flagg who is marshal in the small town of Progress NM around the time of New Mexico statehood. The area is changing rapidly, and quite a few people even have automobiles. Flagg is beginning to get up there in years much like Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott's characters in Ride the High Country, but he knows that there are still some bad guys out there who haven't aged out and might still commit the sort of crime that was done when Flagg was a younger man.

One such man is McKay (George Kennedy), who was the leader of a big gang 20 years ago but who seems to have been laying low, even though he's still wanted. There's a rumor that McKay and his gang are heading for Progress, as the town is about to get a new bank which means a large transfer of cash by train; either the train or the new bank would be prime targets for the old-style western gangs. Flagg tries to tell Mayor Wilker (Martin Balsam) about the danger, but Wilker seems more concerned with his political future and doesn't seem to believe there's any danger from the old-time gangs. Besides, isn't McKay dead? Nobody's heard from him in 20 years.

Of course, McKay isn't dead, and Flagg is able to find him and bring him into town for the reward money. McKay is no longer really the leader of the gang, as it's a wholly new gang led by Waco (David Carradine) who has new ideas, ideas that are fankly too violent for McKay's changing tastes as he too is growing too old for the crime game. Waco's plan is to rob the train when it stops at the station in town, before the money can be transferred to the bank, but without having to board a moving train as folks in the old days might have done. McKay decides to help Flagg defeat Waco's gang.

This means that Flagg and McKay are going to have to board the moving train themselves, and either get it to stop before getting to town (not very likely), or get it to go through town without stopping, which is doable but also difficult. It doesn't help that Flagg is no longer marshal and so the train crew doesn't believe him that he and McKay are the good guys here.

The Good Guys and the Bad Guys is one of those movies from just after the end of the old Production Code regime where westerns tried to blend seriousness with some lighter comedy. It doesn't always work here, but I would also say that it's not a failure by any means. Instead, The Good Guys and the Bad Guys winds up being one of those movies that entertains for the 90 or so minutes that it's on the screen, but by the end it's not anything groundbreaking or terribly memorable. So it's definitely worth a watch if you want something unknown enough that it's more likely new to you, and if you just want to sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.