Colorado Territory

This is as superb western by a director who knows his stuff. Raoul Walsh hasn't received the credit he deserves and this film is all but forgotten. It doesn't have any big stars or overacting, agreed, and perhaps people are looking for Oscar material rather than a great film. It's their loss. The film covers much territory (no pun intended) but certainly not too much and the many surprises work quite well. The characters' motives unravel as the film progresses, the way they should work. There aren't any easy answers here and the clichés are nowhere to be found, unlike so many by-the-numbers westerns. This is an action film from the beginning and keeps things going until the very end. It should be much better known.

Curtis Stotlar

Finally was able to view this semi-famous film (due mainly, I suspect, because of the Raoul Walsh/remake of HIGH SIERRA connection). Is it 'better' than HIGH SIERRA? A question, IMO, that doesn't need to be asked, much less answered. Both are pretty riveting pieces of entertainment for their respective genres (gangster & western). I'll admit I had some innocent fun in comparing the similarities of both. The thing I was struck by was the darker, more devious Malone character in the role Joan Leslie had in HIGH SIERRA and also feeling that maybe Joel McCrea was miscast; his screen persona is the 'stalwart and true' type and not an out and out bandit. His only chance to fit into a criminal role would be when it's 'forced' on him and I don't recall that being the case in this one. But why quibble? Here we have the superior art direction and fast action (mostly in the second half, true) typical of WB at it's late 40's/early 50's peak. This sort of thing makes up for a lot of any kind of casting/scripting deficiencies in my book. And what an under-rated actress is Virginia Mayo! She can be fiery one moment and then quiet and subtle the next. Very desirable in this one. I mostly prefer my westerns in good color, but think perhaps this one was pessimistic and dark enough to warrant B&W without decreasing the entertainment value (as in Walsh's PURSUED).

Outlaw Wes McQueen (Joel McCrea) gets sprung from a Missouri jail on the day before he is to be transported to Leavenworth by his old gang who need him for a big train robbery somewhere out in the Colorado Territory. The characters couldn't be more different. McCrae plays the part of an outlaw struggling with his own moral scruples while his partners Duke (James Mitchell) and Reno (John Archer) compete to see who the meanest one is. The presence of Virginia Mayo in this group doesn't make a lot of sense, but her part increases as the film moves along. One of the film's best plot lines is the jealousy that comes to the surface of Reno's character as Mayo's Colorado Carson is clearly taken with the cool McQueen played by McCrae. On the other side of the law is a ruthless and relentless US Marshall played by Morris Ankrum who leads an impressively sized posse out to catch up with and either shoot or hang McQueen. The film zeroes in on treachery and deceit at every opportunity. Dorothy Malone's character is especially memorable.

Raoul Walsh was perhaps the most entertaining director of the '40's, with movies like "Objective, Burma!", "They Died with Their Boots On" and "Gentleman Jim" behind his name, plus he also made some good early westerns. Sounds like the perfect guy to direct a movie like this, especially since this movie is a western remake of his earlier directed movie classic "High Sierra", with Humphrey Bogart and Ida Lupino. This movie might not be as 'star-filled' as the original but it's just as entertaining, arousing and intriguing on its own.

Westerns from the '40's were much different from the later spaghetti-westerns everybody knows. The early westerns from the '40's and the decades before that are a bit forgotten movies, probably mainly because they differ so much from the later westerns from the '60's and '70's that everybody from that- and later generations, basically grew up with. Westerns from the '40's were much darker and possibly less formulaic. This movie is basically more 'film-noir' than real western. It has all the basic film-noir ingredients in it; Backstabbing characters, treacherous woman, a criminal plot and mysterious unpredictable characters. It makes this movie also real perfect to watch for persons who don't like spaghetti-westerns.

Leave it up to director Raoul Walsh to tell a story well and entertaining. The story of "Colorado Territory" really isn't the most spectacular story you could think of but the way it is told and brought to the screen all can be called spectacular. The movie is filled with some real good action sequences and spectacular looking stunts. But granted that the storytelling is not completely flawless. The movie is perhaps a bit too short and the love story of the movie also doesn't quite work out as good as it could had been. I don't know, for some reason it just doesn't feel right, or connects with the rest of the movie.

The storytelling also makes sure that the movie remains for most part unpredictable, which also helps to make the film-noir elements work out. "Colorado Territory" is a rare both unpredictable and entertaining movie.

The cast is solid. It isn't filled with the most known actors of its period. Perhaps Errol Flynn was expected to play a role in this, since he worked a lot with Raoul Walsh in the '40's but instead the main part is played by Joel McCrea, who was an expert at playing characters in westerns. He plays a good and convincing tough-guy who has a good heart. Perhaps a bit too much of a good heart to make the story entirely believable but that's just common and entirely fitting for '40's movie-making standards.

An interesting to watch- and spectacular entertaining noir-western, that just like its original version "High Sierra", deserves to be seen.

8/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

The commenters who called this "Western noir" are on the money. Just about everyone in this movie is a ratlike scheming double- or triple-crosser. Bad guys suffer fates not noticeably worse than the handful of schmo's who are honest (mostly in the relative, honor-among-thieves sense). It's all bleak for the ones who don't get out alive and also for the ones who do.

The one aspect of this movie that may have lost its punch for 21st century viewers is the script's banal dialogue for the two key women characters. Virginia Mayo in particular is better than her lines and her costume, which is fashioned entirely from clichés about wanton women who aren't 100 percent Anglo. But the story arc treats the women just differently enough from the "classic" Western that it held my interest.

The cast, top to bottom, is excellent. Joel McCrea does that thing he does so well *especially* well here. I'd like to see Peter Sarsgaard reprise a McCrea role some day, in either a Western or a Sturges classic.