Randolph Scott is always enough to warrant high praise and a high rating, but he is backed up with one of his best casts and his best director, Budd Boetticher.Westerns often have revenge as a motive, but not very often in this vein.Also not often does a Scott-Boetticher Western have so few people with any redeeming qualities. Or, perhaps, so many people with few redeeming qualities.This is a true "adult" Western, with too many people acting from poorly thought-out plans and not very moral or ethical plans.The story, plot, characterizations are all first class, and the performers are all first rate, with some of the best Western performers here not even receiving credit.Bob Steele comes first to mind. He was always a good cowboy, and he became a top-quality actor the longer he was around. In "Decision," he has several appearances, always standing out, but never has a line.Guy Wilkerson was, to the best of my knowledge, never a name above the title, but here he has an important role, helping move the action along, helping frame the story, but, again, not given credit.Noah Beery, Jr, already a veteran by this filming, usually played such a sympathetic character the audience's liking spilled over to the actor. But beyond being sympathetic, he expressed emotions and attitudes beautifully. He was an actor!Karen Steele is billed third, but her character was never totally explained, through no fault of her own, and the fourth-billed Valerie French not only had a more fully fleshed out character, she portrayed it more vividly, with a superb performance of a strong and memorable woman.John Carroll too often played a cad or at least caddish character. He was a good-looking and very talented actor, and even a good singer, in earlier roles. He was, in fact, so good-looking and, even as a villain, sympathetic, sometimes it was hard to accept him fully as evil.One of the marks of a good movie is a large number of important characters, many performers with speaking parts. "Decision at Sundown" is crammed full of such, and all more than ably performed.Richard Deacon will probably always be best known as the hapless brother-in-law to the comedy performer on "The Dick Van Dyke Show," but he did much, much more, and well.James Westerfield, "Otis" the bartender, is another very familiar face, and nearly always a strong performer.Andrew Duggan was another good-looking guy and often a bad guy, but here he is as a sheriff, a strong and assured character.There are two director errors, one perhaps questionable, the other really inexcusable.Maybe three: Karen Steele is, again, as was so often true of films of that era, outrageously padded. On her it looked OK, not grotesque, but it was distracting and unrealistic.Scenery, cinematography, editing, and even the music score round out this excellent movie, which is available at YouTube. I recommend it.

A far more interesting and morally complex film than I expected after the first 15 minutes. Randolph Scott stars as a cowboy come to take revenge on a man who wronged him, a man who is now the kingpin of the town of Sundown. But all the characters reveal more layers than our first introductions lead us to expect, and issues of right and wrong end up as more subjective and complex than we think of in most westerns. Not quite a great movie – there are flaws; weak supporting performances, a misogynistic attitude, some unsuccessful comic relief, some stretching of credulity, etc. But a movie that was much more striking than I had any expectation of.

In more recent years, the revisionist Western made heroes out of outlaws and men out for revenge. Think of Clint Eastwood's Will Munny in "Unforgiven". At the same time, Gene Hackman's Little Bill Daggett in the same picture was the epitome of the evil town boss, taking gleeful pleasure in dispatching anyone who threatened his supremacy. You can replace the town of Big Whiskey with the titled town of this picture, but the protagonists here don't quite build the kind of tension one expects on the way to a final showdown. Bart Allison's (Randolph Scott) motivation is built on the false premise that a villain stole his wife away from him, and refuses to acknowledge that she was in fact a 'loose' woman. The town-folk of Sundown are presented as intermediaries in this fable, who have trouble acknowledging that Tate Kimbrough (John Carroll) is the bad guy he's supposed to be, or at least as bad as Allison's preconceived notion insists on.Since I brought Eastwood's name into it, I might as well get another thought off my chest. I like Randolph Scott, but casting him as a sixty year old gunfighter doesn't quite work in the final analysis. Catch him hunched over the bar looking like hell after the film's high spot and you'll see what I mean. Though he did age better than John Wayne and kept himself in generally good shape. I'm trying to visualize him fifty pounds overweight wearing an eye-patch and it's not a pretty picture.I've read any number of reviews regarding Scott's collaboration with director Budd Boetticher, but I haven't experienced the magic yet. I'd rate the two I've seen so far, "Comanche Station" and "Ride the High Country" as somewhat better, primarily because Scott's character comes off as a more principled and heroic figure in those films. In this one, it's the villain who rides off into the sunset with the girl, leaving the conflicted gunman behind to tend to his wounds and trying to figure out where it all went wrong.

A very angry Randolph Scott and his sidekick Noah Beery Jr. ride into the town of Sundown. Everyone is abuzz about that day's wedding of it's most prominent citizen John Carroll, a man Scott has unfinished business with and ends up sparking a city-wide rebellion against.Another great collaboration between Scott and director Budd Boetticher, this offbeat and uncompromising western melodrama has a lot to say about the deadly sin of pride and the complications involving these two men afflicted with it.The climax and the final scene are really surprising and unique in that during the whole movie, it's Scott's pride that leads him to try and kill Carroll and it's that same pride that prevents him from carrying it through after Carroll's wounding by a third party.In the end, it's strange to see a western where the villain lives, leaving town with his head bowed, cured of his delusions of grandeur, while the hero wanders off in a drunken, blustery fit of anger, consumed bu his own self-righteousness.As with other films from Boetticher, this is visually stunning, with wonderful composition and great use of color. With most of the action taking place in town, there isn't much of Boetticher's usually well-photographed scenery, but the sets and costumes (especially Scott's cool leather jacket) look great.