"Decision at Sundown" (a doubtless deliberately misleading title -- "Sundown" turns out to be not a time but a place) is an off-beat Western that uses genre conventions to keep the audience guessing right from the hold-up at the start; nice to see the 'bad girl' survive to get the man, for example! Nothing is quite as certain as it seems, including the question of whether moral certainty is actually a good thing...
I'd recently heard that Randolph Scott and Budd Boetticher were a good combination to look out for, and watched this film on that basis simply because I happened to notice it in the TV listings two or three minutes before it was scheduled to start: I had other plans for the afternoon and mentally reserved the option to switch off and abandon the film if it didn't hold my interest. But it soon displayed a sure hand at sketching in characters and letting slip vital, concise bits of information to question what we thought we already knew -- the basic plot strains plausibility a little (the script clearly feels the need to acknowledge and justify this, and, to do it justice, it does do a valiant job at providing the necessary character rationales), but it's very watchable. By the end we're not quite sure *whose* side we ought to be on -- I for one didn't find the belated semi-legal righteousness of the townsfolk terribly attractive, although I think this was probably the line intended by the script -- as unexpected characters admit weakness and the expectations of the genre no longer seem to offer a satisfactory outcome.
I was actually reminded of "Terror in a Texas Town", another unexpected Western, although on the face of it the two have little in common. Leonard Maltin complains that this film is too wordy, and perhaps the doctor's philosophising is the one element that tends to be overdone rather than understated: but the film isn't about galloping cowboys and quick-draw shootouts (although it briefly has both) but about the psychological strains that culminate in the decision of the title. It is certainly worth watching, and veers on the edge of being very good indeed. My gut instinct, after a few hours' rumination, is that it just fails on the latter, but it's an honourable failure.
I'd recently heard that Randolph Scott and Budd Boetticher were a good combination to look out for, and watched this film on that basis simply because I happened to notice it in the TV listings two or three minutes before it was scheduled to start: I had other plans for the afternoon and mentally reserved the option to switch off and abandon the film if it didn't hold my interest. But it soon displayed a sure hand at sketching in characters and letting slip vital, concise bits of information to question what we thought we already knew -- the basic plot strains plausibility a little (the script clearly feels the need to acknowledge and justify this, and, to do it justice, it does do a valiant job at providing the necessary character rationales), but it's very watchable. By the end we're not quite sure *whose* side we ought to be on -- I for one didn't find the belated semi-legal righteousness of the townsfolk terribly attractive, although I think this was probably the line intended by the script -- as unexpected characters admit weakness and the expectations of the genre no longer seem to offer a satisfactory outcome.
I was actually reminded of "Terror in a Texas Town", another unexpected Western, although on the face of it the two have little in common. Leonard Maltin complains that this film is too wordy, and perhaps the doctor's philosophising is the one element that tends to be overdone rather than understated: but the film isn't about galloping cowboys and quick-draw shootouts (although it briefly has both) but about the psychological strains that culminate in the decision of the title. It is certainly worth watching, and veers on the edge of being very good indeed. My gut instinct, after a few hours' rumination, is that it just fails on the latter, but it's an honourable failure.