I'm in the minority here. Reading these other reviews, I can't believe we've seen the same movie. Let's see, the good: The Tetons, Anchor Ranch exteriors, uh...Glenn Ford riding a horse (although even this gets a bit tiresome), Edward G. Robinson doing pretty much anything. Now the bad: everything else. The women flounce, b**ch and moan, the men spill testosterone all over the place, the dialogue borders on parody. Stanwyck's character is such a cliché as to be distracting, someone apparently told Brian Keith to play Cole 'like a snake' and he couldn't have taken it to a greater extreme if he'd gotten down on the floor and slithered out the door. Glenn Ford is supported by stalwart former soldiers, the Anchor gang is exclusively faceless cowhand/gunslingers, the women (other than Stanwyck) are of little consequence, they deliver their lines and exit stage right (or left) reappearing to again deliver a predictable line or two, or maybe to shoot the fleeing (on foot!) evil Stanwyck as a favor to the director who apparently couldn't think of a plausible endgame. The characters are consistently unironic, unself-aware and little bothered by nuance. I gave it a four mostly because of the mountains. (I checked 'contains spoiler' because I didn't want to end up on some evil list but, frankly, spoiling this film for you would be a favor)
Review of The Violent Men
