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Warlock (1959)

Director Edward Dmytryk is one of those dependable Golden Age mainstays who is pulling off tightly made movies even this late in the game. After many archetypal movies, often just short of greatness, he is still putting on a good game with first rate camera-work (Joe MacDonald) and top shelf actors (Henry Fonda, Anthony Quinn, and Richard Widmark, all in major roles). And so this is actually a strong, complex movie.

It helps that the plot, even though apparently another retread of Western clichés, is complex and well balanced. That the bad guys are partly very good and vice versa is exactly what the genre needs, and it is filmed so gorgeously--the night and interior stuff especially--it has a feeling of total command. It's a strong if still conventional film, a true Western in the best Anthony Mann sense rather than John Ford.

The plot is too complex to even analyze quickly, but a couple key elements play out. First, Fonda and Quinn play hired marshals who come into towns overwhelmed by some bad guys. They are hired for their ruthlessness because the town has no choice, but when they get to work, the town begins to doubt itself. And then there are all the secret past events that seem to converge here, almost too perfectly, but creating a layered and sometimes confusing backstory that gradually moves front and center.

All three male actors are in top form--I'll assume it's because the whole lot of them were consummate professionals there to get a job done well. While this was made years after the official end of the old studio system, it still is made (on location) with the same general factory ethic--tight production standards, familiar genres, efficient entertainment. It works, and it works better than it should. Certainly not a classic like "High Noon" or "Stagecoach," but a solid entry even for people who think they don't like westerns.