Married couple from the east, traveling to California by horse-drawn wagon, seeks help from a mysterious man riding through Arizona with an agenda: he's a former-sheriff after the men who killed his wife. Western saga, with beautiful location shooting in Lone Pine, CA, was produced by John Wayne's company, Batjac, but seems a highly inappropriate vehicle for the Duke (one can't sense him displaying second-hand guilt over being unemployed which caused his working spouse to be killed on the job). Screenwriter Burt Kennedy brings in two sidewinders (Don Barry and a frothing-at-the-mouth Lee Marvin) to create tension between the couple and with Randolph Scott, but also throws in Apaches, bank robbers, as well as flirtations between the Mrs. (who has a 'soft' husband) and the ex-lawman. The constant clichés in Kennedy's writing--although probably a lot less stale in 1956 than today--are disheartening. Gail Russell is a lovely presence, but is given nothing to do beyond hanging laundry and offering everyone coffee; Scott is supposed to have feelings for her, but seems surprised every time she calls his name. Director Budd Boetticher has a good eye for composing action scenes, and he obviously enjoys setting up conflict between his characters (most preferably in tight quarters, to make the audience squirm), but he isn't very talented with actors. The picture revived Scott's career, but his handsomely-pained expression has no variance, and his Ben Stride is a dullard anyway. ** from ****

This first teaming of Scott & Boetticher also finds them working from a script by Burt Kennedy - his very first screenplay, and impressive enough that he worked with this team three more times, eventually moving on to a prolific if not exciting directorial career himself.All the elements are in place: the lone, upright and indomitable man, with the tragic past and a taste for vengeance that keeps him going against all odds...a woman, no freer than he but just as determined, in her own way....her weak husband, prey to the villains that made off with the gold....a charismatic nemesis who may or may not be one of the killers that the hero has vowed vengeance on....seven bad men who must be brought to justice - his kind of justice.OK that makes it sound hokey, but lets face it an awful lot of westerns sound that way if you reduce them to basics. What makes this one stand out? The terrific widescreen color photography (by William Clothier) and Boetticher's exquisite framing and graceful camera movements -- little rapid cutting here, no scenes that don't play out as long as they need to, and yet the whole comes in at a perfect 78 minutes. The subtle sexual nuances between ex-sheriff Ben Stride (Scott) and strong-willed Annie Greer (Gail Russell) who Stride has joined with and is helping out - despite the presence of her weak husband John (Walter Reed)...the fabulous performance of Lee Marvin as Bill Masters, a likable rogue who may or may not be involved in the crime that took Stride's wife, the participants in which he will hunt down unto death.Boetticher does a lot with a smallish budget and the 50s standards of what you could show; his first action sequence is a tense little moment under a rock with Stride coming upon two men in the rain and stopping for coffee with them, until he finds out....and then we cut away as the shots ring out. The tension is built and released, and we really don't need to see the same standard gun play in every scene - so he doesn't give it to us. We have off-screen shots, quick cutaways between shooters, a reaction shot or two of victims without seeing the shots fired, a dynamic use of space in the many canyon sequences leads to odd angles and unpredictable shots -- really he does more with the few gunfights in this film than many directors did in whole careers.The characters, too, are beautifully developed from small nuances. Scott, typically, is the strong and stoic type, but the sexual tension expressed in all the early scenes between him and Russell is extraordinarily powerful with just an eyebrow, a smile communicating all we need. Marvin, too, is attracted to the sole female in this male world (apart from a very brief bar scene) but his is a predatory view, albeit couched in a touch of civility. His flamboyant dress, flip attitude, and egotism pretty much steal the show and make his final standoff with our hero all the more memorable, because we actually care at least a little about him.In the end, the hero must go it alone, and whether he prevails or not, and whether the woman he has come to love will be free - and willing - to meet him if he does survive the last showdown -- all that I will not reveal. See it for yourself, it's easily one of the best westerns of the 50s and a great start to a series of films that continued on a remarkably high level.

Although this, the first of the Randolph Scott/Budd Boetticher westerns, wasn't produced by Harry Joe Brown, (Andrew V McLaglen is credited as co-producer), it was written, superbly, by Burt Kennedy and it did set a benchmark for those that followed. Indeed, the collaboration between Boetticer, Scott and Kennedy must rank amongst the finest and most fruitful in all of cinema and the westerns they made together are among the finest we've seen.The plots stuck to a simple formula. Scott was usually the taciturn, lone stranger, as here, more often than not, out to avenge the death of his wife. The villains were usually a gang of outlaws and there was always a woman involved but she remained somewhat on the periphery and although there was a romantic attraction between the woman and Scott it seldom amounted to anything. The principal relationship in these films, verging at times on the homo-erotic, was between Scott and the villain.In "Seven Men from Now" Scott is after the seven men who held up the Wells Fargo office and killed his wife in the process. On route, the teams up with mild-mannered rancher Walter Reed and his wife Gail Russell as well as 'villians' Lee Marvin and Donald Barry out to take the money for themselves. Nothing is cut-and-dried; the rancher isn't as pure or as weak as he first appears while Scott and Marvin's relationship verges, at times, on the affectionate, heightening the tension between them particularly in the film's superbly staged final showdown. Likewise, the relationship between Russell and Scott is far from conventional; they obviously love each other but we are are never sure if anything will ever happen between them.This is a complex, riveting picture magnificently photographed by William H Clothier and beautifully acted by Scott, (it is arguably his best performance), Russell and Marvin. Like the other Boetticher/Scott westerns that followed it it clocks in at an economical 80 minutes or so and is simply not to be missed.

I thought that I had already seen this western, so I wasn't expecting much when I tuned in to it recently. Maybe I had already seen it, but it must have been so long ago that the UK was transmitting television in black-and-white only, for I am sure that I would have remembered the dazzling colour photography if nothing else.But there is so much else: a taut script, piling irony upon irony; fine character acting, not only from Randolph Scott but also from Lee Marvin, Walter Reed and Gail Russell. The ambivalence of Lee Marvin's character Bill Masters is a tour-de-force, especially the scene in which he takes a light for his cigarette from the smouldering remains of one resting on the lips of the man he has just killed.A film that packs so much action and human interest into less than 80 minutes.A classic.