It vies with The Naked Spur as the best Stewart-Mann western, although Bend of the River and Winchester '73 are also excellent. What I particularly like about this Stewart-Mann western is Stewart's hero is presented as flawed, often maimed psychologically, and never more so than here. The hero is superior but not superhuman. He's very human. Jeff Webster is taciturn, even righteously egotistical. Which, I guess, means Stewart is playing against type and does so expertly. Jeff's credo is totally solipsistic: he'll look out for himself (and in a pinch his sidekick Walter Brennan) and no one else. Of course, there's a price to pay. In a sense, Stewart's take and that of the movie is on It's A Wonderful Life. Only here Jeff Webster gets to see the effects of his willful withdrawal from the community in real time. Definitely top-notch.

James Stewart, Walter Brennan, John McIntire, Ruth Roman, Jay C. Flippen, Corinne Calvet, Steve Brodie, Harry Morgan, Robert Wilke, Jack Elam, Kathleen Freeman - lots of familiar names and faces in this western.It was my first look at THE FAR COUNTRY (1954) and I was very impressed. The story was terrific, acting solid and the scenery excellent (on location in Alberta, Canada). It was great story-telling. with the twist or two to surprise you. The ending featured a couple of more surprises. It didn't hurt that Anthony Mann was directing, too. He and Stewart worked a number of movies together.Here's an interesting tidbit: the horse in this movie was the same one that Stewart used in 16 other movies!!!!! He and this horse were great pals and the horse was an excellent actor. Really.....that's what I read, and I thought that was kinda cool. In fact, there is an example of it in the final dramatic scene in this film.

This Anthony-Mann directed adventure yarn gets an extra point for its location shooting. It's not Skagway, Alaska, or Dawson, in the Yukon. It's in the Canadian Rockies and the landscape is majestic.Stewart and Brennan are two saddle buddies who have brought a herd of cattle to Skagway, where they are confiscated by the roguish villain and only law officer, McIntire. The local saloon mistress, Roman, takes a shine to Stewart and bails him out of jail. The shine on Stewart is buffed by an innocent, passionate, kind French girl, Calvet.All of them, Stewart's cattle included, wind up in the muddy camp of Dawson. They're followed by McIntire and his henchmen, who set about doing evil, robbing hard working miners of their claims, sneering, shooting innocent civilians and engaging in other such mishigas.Stewart doesn't care for anyone but himself and perhaps for his old buddy Brennan. But McIntire and his goons offend him once too often. Gunplay ensues. And, as is usual in an Anthony Mann movie of the period, the violence is pretty brutal.If you stripped the film of its lush budget and carefully drawn supporting characters, you'd have a John Wayne B movie from 1935 -- "The Man From Skagway." Maybe "Guns of the Yukon," or something of that ilk.But money and talent make a difference, and while is far from a challenging movie -- nobody's character evolves except Stewart's -- it's as entertaining as all get out, by gum.Stewart does a fine job, and Brennan is Stumpy in excelsis. Ruth Roman is stiff and Corinne Calvet is a little cloying, but so what? We have McIntire as a kind of Judge Roy Bean of the Far North. We also have Ruth Roman's men being buried beneath fifty feet of snow on "the ice trail." The ice trail is actually the Columbia Ice Fields. I watched them shooting these scenes as a child. When I visited the Columbia Ice Field some thirty years later, the location was barely recognizable because the glacier had melted so much that its edge had retreated more than a hundred yards.

This is one of my least favorite films that James Stewart made during the 1950s. Why? Well, because unlike most of his western characters, this one is NOT a good guy. In fact, he's completely amoral and indifferent to the suffering and injustices done to others. He only acts when he personally is involved--even allowing those close to him to suffer immensely.The film is set in Alaska and the Yukon during the gold rush of the late 19th and early 20th century. Although the setting is different, the film is essentially a very traditional western. There is the usual formulaic bad boss-man (John McIntire) who tries to take over the land and cheat all the poor people out of their land--probably the most common theme in westerns. And, of course, he has his evil sidekicks. And the hero, of sorts, has his own sidekick--the always reliable Walter Brennan. In fact, it's all so very formulaic that I won't bother to elaborate further.The bottom line is that there is nothing particularly new here and Stewart is almost unlikable! Because of this, despite nice location shooting and decent production values, this is a rather joyless film. Watchable, but not especially fun.