Beautifully-filmed Budd Boetticher outdoor saga, one in a series of westerns the filmmaker produced with star Randolph Scott (usually from a screenplay by writer Burt Kennedy), involves former sheriff-turned-bounty hunter attempting to bring in wanted killer across desolate Arizona terrain, inadvertently coming to the aid of shapely widow whose husband was captured and killed by Indians. Film opens with terrific desert stand-off, but rather quickly lapses into genre clichés with the arrival of two randy gunmen (Pernell Roberts and a debuting James Coburn) paying the lady a hostile visit. Aside from Charles Lawton Jr.'s glorious color cinematography, Randolph Scott's unruffled, low-key charm is really the only thing this routine adventure has going for it. Dialogue scenes are stilted, as is the male camaraderie. ** from ****
Review of Ride Lonesome
