"Buchanan Rides Alone" was the fourth of seven films made between 1956-60 starring Randolph Scott and directed by famed director Budd Boetticher. As the title suggests, Scott plays yet another loner with no family ties.Tom Buchanan (Scott) is a soldier of fortune fighting in Mexico in order to earn a stake to stock his small ranch in West Texas. He arrives in the small border town of Agry Town on the U.S./ Mexican border. He is carrying with him $2,000 which he has earned in Mexico.The town is controlled by the Agry brothers. Judge Amos Agry (Tol Avery)and the sheriff Lew Agry (Barry Kelley). Amos Agry (Peter Whitney) is the simple minded brother who acts as a hotel clerk and Simon's son Roy (William Leslie) is a womanizing hot head. Carbo (Craig Stevens) is Simon's "bodyguard" who keeps a cool head midst the double dealings between Simon and Lew.Roy rides frantically into town with visible markings on his face. Tom and Roy have words just as a young Mexican Juan de la Vega (Manuel Rojas) rides in in pursuit of Roy. Juan shoots Roy and is taken by Lew's men. A scuffle ensues and Tom comes to Juan's aid. Both men are arrested and charged with Roy's murder. Tom is 'relieved of his money belt by Lew. Lew meanwhile, is ready to lynch both when Simon races in to stop the lynchings. Carbo had convinced Simon that a lynching would be bad for his political aspirations.Tom is found innocent and is sent packing, escorted by Lew's deputies Pecos (L.Q. Jones) and Lafe (Don C. Harvey), who have orders to kill Buchanan. Pecos and Tom become friendly, both coming from the same part of Texas. Pecos saves Tom's life by killing Lafe. Tom then offers the likable Pecos a piece of his ranch.Juan, meanwhile, is sentenced to hang. Before the sentence can be carried out, Carbo convinces Simon to demand a $50,000 ransom from Juan's father, a wealthy Mexican rancher (whom we never see). Courier Gomez (Joe De Santis) returns with the money and Lew plans to get the money for himself.Lew sends Juan along with his deputies led by Waldo (Robert Anderson) to an isolated shack. Unfortunately, Buchanan and Pecos are already there. They tie up the deputies and take Juan away telling him to flee to his home. However Waldo and the others manage to escape and follow. Tom believing Pecos and Juan are safe, returns to Agry. Waldo kills Pecos and re-captures Juan, bringing him back to town.Lew then begins to negotiate with Gomez for the ransom but is prevented from doing so and....................................................As in other entries in the series, there are sympathetic villains. Buchanan becomes fond of Pecos to the point of taking him on as a partner. Although more self-serving, the gunman Carbo and Buchanan develop a mutual respect for each other. And, there is no real leading lady in this one. Watch for western veterans Terry Frost and Riley Hill as members of the jury at Juan and Tom's trial.Another great little western from Scott and Boetticher..

The grand run of Randolph Scott-Budd Boetticher westerns stumbles a bit in this serio-comic outing featuring a town of villains who get more than they bargained for when they tangle with a man named Buchanan they underestimate to their grief.Buchanan (Scott) rides into Agry Town, on the border between California and Mexico, looking to make tracks to his West Texas home. But the Agrys are tough customers who rile easily. Buchanan finds himself facing the brunt of their nastiness after saving a Mexican from their brand of vigilante justice.Scott does a lot of smiling here, more than any of his other Boetticher-directed vehicles, of a piece with the more amiable if still dangerous mood of the film. The comedy is established early when we see Scott take stock of his new surroundings. Everyone in Agry Town is fairly corrupt and mean of spirit, particularly the three Agry brothers who control the town."Ain't there anybody in this town who ain't an Agry?" Buchanan marvels.No one cares about the boy whom the Mexican kills, "it was inevitable" is all the father cares to say, and you see he's right. But since the kid was an Agry, it doesn't matter he was up to no good. They decide to lynch the Mexican quick, not to mention Buchanan for helping him. Buchanan, it turns out, was carrying $2,000 that the fat sheriff, Lew Agry (Barry Kelley) wants for himself. Lew's fatter brother, Amos (Peter Whitney), is sore because he wants a bigger share of the loot, but Lew enlists his help to double-cross town boss Simon Agry, the dead man's father, out of money he hopes to extort from the Mexican's rich dad.Them Agrys themselves don't have much going for them other than sordidness. The westerns Scott made with director Boetticher usually had fascinating villains in them, ruthless men of character and sand, who made these adventures memorable. Here, the only interesting characters are played by Craig Stevens, as the one Agry honcho who looks like he eats a salad now and then, and L. Q. Jones as a gunman who cottons to Buchanan because he's from West Texas, too.It's wrong to dock a movie because it's not "Ride Lonesome" or "Seven Men From Now;" few are in that class. "Buchanan Rides Alone" does have its moments, mostly comic, like a trial scene where Buchanan amuses the jury with the story of his ramrod livelihood or a scene where Jones offers some heartfelt words over the corpse of an ex-partner who probably shouldn't have stole from him so often.Buchanan has a scene where he's trying to get his money back from the sheriff, who tells him it's in a safe. Shoot me, the sheriff says, and you won't get your money."You know something, sheriff, it just might be worth it," Buchanan replies.But like julian-er-allen says in a January 2013 review here, this is "very much the poor relation" in the Scott-Boetticher clan, more so than the oft-criticized "Decision At Sundown" which has style and passion missing here. Scott seems stiff and awkward too often, and the story stagnates into a series of captures and escapes. There's an especially ridiculous section in the last half-hour where Buchanan and his friends leave some bad guys with their horses and guns. It's hard to care as much as you should when the hero himself doesn't seem too swift.The ending is a right hash of a good idea, centering on a bag of money which really shouldn't matter as much as it is made to here. The point may be that corruption corrupts everyone, even the good guys, but it's so underplayed it doesn't connect to anything. It just drags.Add to that a television-western set design even Lucian Ballard's lenswork can't save and generic musical underscoring, and you have a disappointing example that even great filmmakers and actors have their off days. "Buchanan" is kind of fun, in a low-key way, but it's nothing like what you have a right to expect from this team.

The fourth collaboration between Boetticher and Scott does not quite measure up to its predecessors but is enjoyable enough. Scott plays an easy-going stranger passing through a town run by a dastardly family. Of course, he has a run-in with the family and ends up in jail. Stevens, who played Peter Gunn on a popular TV series that started the same year as this film came out, plays a somewhat shady character here. L.Q. Jones, who made a career out of playing nasty villains, gets to play a clean-cut good guy here. Unlike the previous films in this series, this one has no female characters; it would have perhaps benefited from having a love interest for Scott.

This is one of the best westerns I have ever seen, I have seen many Randolph Scott's B westerns which I found just OK, but this one is very entertaining and with interesting characters too. I think "Buchanan Rides Alone" deserves 8.5 stars.The plot is very good and it has some interesting little turns, Randolph Scott is the lead in here but the supporting cast gets a lot of time on screen too, I would have liked to see more of the Abe Carbo character and I think that the little role of Barbara James as Nina the judge's Mexican housekeeper could have been better exploited. The time fly by very fast maybe because it only last 78 min, but I think that this film deserved to last at least 20 minutes more because the plot and the characters had the potential for much more. The action scenes are good . This is an underrated movie that deserves better recognition, it must be at least a cult movie.Tom Buchanan is a gunman who is returning to his home in Texas after having earned a lot of money fighting in the Mexico Revolution but he will find troubles for helping a Mexican who was getting a beating in a California town that is run by the 3 Agry brothers...................I recommend this movie to all of you who are fans of western films, you wont regret it.