Western Hall of Fame II

I hear ya bro.

Those legs! Oh man!

The Salvation

Jon: Don't be afraid.

The first time I saw this, a year or so back, I was somewhere in the middle of enjoyment and indifference. Which may have been my high expectation with actors like Mads Mikkelsen, Eva Green and Jonathan Pryce featured, I remember being pretty excited to see this.

With a rewatch my enjoyment as sincerely improved. Which, also, could be that remembering my so-so enjoyment and therefore low expectations, it easily exceeded them. lol

This is your cookie-cutter revenge story with the checklist fully completed.
Mikkelsen, and his brother, both former soldiers from The Netherlands(?) have been attempting to forge out new lives in the American west for some seven years. Mikkelsen has sent for his wife and his around ten year old son to join them.
On the stagecoach home, they get stuck sharing it with a man fresh out of jail, hungry and horny, and his associate.
Mikkelsen is knocked from the stagecoach and chases after on foot.
He soon comes across his murdered son left in the road and soon after, the dead driver of the stage coach. He then catches up to the parked coach with one of the men keeping watching as his wife is raped within.
He shoots them dead and finds his wife, dead, inside the coach.

Such is the beginning of this western.
To take it to even darker terrain, the rapist is the brother of a man who runs a gang who extorts the town a day's ride from Mikkelsen's farm.

Some of this reminds me of similar themes of High Noon and even The Oxbow Incident in regards to cowardice and fear ruling over what is right. The terrified townsfolk betraying Mikkelsen and his brother to live another day at the hands of the gang leader, played with a quiet menace by Jeffrey Dean Morgan. A truly cruel and unforgiving b@stard in the full sense of the word.
Another stand out is Eva Green. A mute captive who does an amazing job with only her steely gaze.


While still a basic revenge story, we do have some solid dialogue, strategic shootouts and the above mentioned moral dilemma of cowardice and self-preservation's power to quickly betray good people out of fear of evil men. The greater evil that motivates them is discovered in the final act. Making for a very worthwhile rewatch and bringing this film higher up on my very, very long list of westerns I like watching.

__________________
What I actually said to win MovieGal's heart:
- I might not be a real King of Kinkiness, but I make good pancakes

~Mr Minio

They were from Denmark.

THANK YOU!! Could NOT remember where.

No problem.
Fun fact! The war that they reference but never explicitly name was The Second Schleswig War with Germany in 1864.
I had to look it up to discover that

The Cowboys

John Wayne is old. In 1972 it was an inescapable fact. He may have even been down to one lung at this point, but I may be off by a few years. Regardless, his best years were behind him.
And this film embraces that possibility. He plays an old Ranch Owner. He just lost a few more workers who have set off on their own to strike it rich in the gold rush. The times are changing, he says to himself. Or something similar.
But that’s the premise of the film. The old guard hands off the baton to the new. And in this case, he passes his knowledge off to some boys. There’s even an metaphor used by way of an older bull defeating a younger one, due to his experience.
But what it really comes down to is more then the Duke passing off the mantle to the younger generation ( he only made 6 more films after this before passing away in 1979, and two of them weren’t westerns).
It’s about a man yearning the chance to be a father again, highlighted by an early scene where he is at his sons graves.
These boys offer him a second chance of sorts. To pass on his knowledge as a father would to his son.
Unfortunately, the film never really lives up to expectations. There was something off about the direction. Rydell, the director, is no Ford or Hawks. It shows here.
It doesn’t help that the film switches tone about 3 quarters of the way through.

@Wyldesyde19 just confirming I didn’t miss some of your reviews? I have you at 6/8 although you sent in your list.

So we’re just waiting on Ed then, and he still has five days to complete it! (Also @edarsenal if you need an extension no worries).

very much appreciated but I should be able to knock this out by then. THANKS

It's kinda hard to figure which of the noms will do good and which will come in towards the bottom. It seems every movie had it's fans and it's detractors, which means we had a great selection of noms to choose from

Page 15, towards the bottom has my Review of The Ox Bow incident.
Page 21, also bottom, has my review for Rio Bravo

I’ve figured it’s a tight race between Ox Bow and Liberty.

Ox Bow may take this, or at least be in the top 3, and, like CR said, pretty much every film has had good and bad reviews.

Agreed, but those two were almost universally praised by us here with a few exceptions, compared to the others.

The Shooting

Coley Boyard: [regarding Woman] You don't like her much, Will, do ya?
Willett Gashade: She ain't showin' me nothin' to like.

This would definitely benefit from a secondary watching, that's for sure.
Though I definitely will say, for a film that is quite the slow burner and is spent, mostly, traversing the desert, it definitely kept my interest and kept an air of tension throughout.
The characters had a great dynamics to one another. Coley's continually amusing jabbering compensating for the "cards held tight to the chest" of Billy and The Woman. One, in it for the promise of violence. The second, a spoiled, callous creature intent on the hunt at the price of everyone around her, and possibly, herself. Finally, the grounded center that is Willet trying to make sense out of it all while trying to decipher what was at the end of the trail and how to survive it.

This is a cerebral undertaking that plays on the minimalist scale. Everything is kept low key and scarcely anything is revealed. Even the ending that is an abrupt ending that seems that there should be more and yet, does not really need to be.
I can easily see this as a novel similar to the long, drawn out books I read as a kid in school that delved far more into the psyche, the scenery and an intellectual/philosophical discussion of it's more symbolic aspects.
Definitely one for a Film Class to ponder over.

No clue where this will rank on your ballot but I wish I could give your review another . I liked it first time through and liked it a bit more after the second. I don't know if The Woman was spoiled, though. I think she was driven by tragedy and getting justice (revenge?) was top priority even at the expense of her own life. Everybody else was simply a tool to be used.

Aaaaaaaand.....I think Liberty Valance is the fav at this point.

I’ll just say it’s a VERY tight race right now, Ed’s ballot could push any one of the top four movies to the win.

:::Insert Evil Laugh Here:::

thank you!
For me she seemed spoiled with the constant demands for "do this for me, do that", complaints about not having tea, etc. etc.

It wasn’t so much that she was spoiled I think, but rather she knew they were hunting his brother. His twin in fact.
His similarity in appearance probably triggered her, which was why she acted that way towards them both.