It's one of those "journey" stories in which a group with mixed motives must cross dangerous territory to reach their goal. In this case, the territory is a desert, as it was in so many other Westerns -- "They Came to Cordura," "Three Godfathers", and the rest.
Nice cast, too, with performers that are either reasonably good, like Kirk Douglas in the lead role of a US Marshall who must get his prisoner, Walter Brennan, to San Loma without his being lynched, or else merely seasoned, like Roy Teal, or at least no worse than we've come to expect of them, like Virginia Mayo and John Agar.
The script wastes little time on meanders. It's tightly drawn, even though the script lacks the folk poetry of the Westerns that Burt Kennedy wrote for Budd Boettiger. That is, the dialog is functional but nobody says anything like, "Ma'am, if you was my woman I'd have come for you even if I'd of died in the doin' of it." The location shooting is quite good. The desert is convincingly captured, even though the movie really deserves color. The director, Raoul Walsh, knows how to shoot a movie and maintain pace and complexity. What a craftsman!
In outlining the more admirable features of the film, I've thrown in a lot of qualifications, and for a reason. Overall, it resembles a story left over from some B Western of the 1930s, starring John Wayne or Wild Bill Elliot or Bob Steele. They had names like "The Star Packer" and "Melody Ranch" and "Shadows on the Sage." Everyone did his job but brought nothing extra to the production. It begins with the generic Western title: "Along the Great Divide." The great divide has nothing to do with it. The story moves along efficiently and without much soul.
Douglas is fine, Brennan is okay, and Jim Anderson, the real villain, is as abrasive on film as he was in real life. He was the redneck who spit on Gregory Peck's lawyer in "To Kill a Mockingbird." He may have enjoyed the chance because he and Peck hated each other. Virginia Mayo as Brennan's dusty daughter is surprisingly okay, despite falling deeply in love with Douglas after a two-minute chat behind the joshua trees. Douglas gets to fix the self-inflicted wound on her trim calf. Lucky Kirk.
Nice cast, too, with performers that are either reasonably good, like Kirk Douglas in the lead role of a US Marshall who must get his prisoner, Walter Brennan, to San Loma without his being lynched, or else merely seasoned, like Roy Teal, or at least no worse than we've come to expect of them, like Virginia Mayo and John Agar.
The script wastes little time on meanders. It's tightly drawn, even though the script lacks the folk poetry of the Westerns that Burt Kennedy wrote for Budd Boettiger. That is, the dialog is functional but nobody says anything like, "Ma'am, if you was my woman I'd have come for you even if I'd of died in the doin' of it." The location shooting is quite good. The desert is convincingly captured, even though the movie really deserves color. The director, Raoul Walsh, knows how to shoot a movie and maintain pace and complexity. What a craftsman!
In outlining the more admirable features of the film, I've thrown in a lot of qualifications, and for a reason. Overall, it resembles a story left over from some B Western of the 1930s, starring John Wayne or Wild Bill Elliot or Bob Steele. They had names like "The Star Packer" and "Melody Ranch" and "Shadows on the Sage." Everyone did his job but brought nothing extra to the production. It begins with the generic Western title: "Along the Great Divide." The great divide has nothing to do with it. The story moves along efficiently and without much soul.
Douglas is fine, Brennan is okay, and Jim Anderson, the real villain, is as abrasive on film as he was in real life. He was the redneck who spit on Gregory Peck's lawyer in "To Kill a Mockingbird." He may have enjoyed the chance because he and Peck hated each other. Virginia Mayo as Brennan's dusty daughter is surprisingly okay, despite falling deeply in love with Douglas after a two-minute chat behind the joshua trees. Douglas gets to fix the self-inflicted wound on her trim calf. Lucky Kirk.