Crack Think3 2009 Movies
Still not quite getting why Randolph Scott was a star. He's okay in this hostage drama thanks to some nice direction by Budd Boetticher, but its Richard Boone who steals the picture as Usher, the leader of the bad guys.
Boone is a tough, intimidating presence but at the same time always projects intelligence in his roles. He's terrific here. Skip Homeir and Henry Silva are good in their one dimensional thug roles, while Tarzan's Jane is almost unrecognizable as the 'plain' Doretta Mims. Arthur Hunnicutt is also enjoyable in a brief role. Decent script by Burt Kennedy based on a Elmore Leonard novel. Just not getting the Randolph Scott thing. 'The Tall T' is an entertaining western that builds slowly in setting up a tense confrontation, replete with casual brutality, between three characters brought together by their mutual avarice.
Rancher Pat Brennan(Randolph Scott) loses a bet with his former boss(Robert Burton) and in the bargain his horse, so he has to walk all the way back home. Along the way, he gets a ride from his pal Rintoon(Arthur Hunnicutt) who is transporting Doretta(Maureen O'Sullivan) and Willard Mims(John Hubbard), a newly married couple. One would be happy for the newlyweds if Willard had not married Doretta for her family's money.(Willard is the kind of person who gives cowards a bad name.) Frank Usher(Richard Boone) resorts to a criminal life to raise money while looking forward to owning a ranch like Pat in the future. In return, Pat inquires why he only asks for $50,000(which is still a lot of money). Frank's reply is that he is not greedy. While the first 20 minutes are a slow go, once the story picks up this is a taught, tense, and intelligent western.
Randolph Scott is great as the cunning but flawed hero Pat Brennan, but the real stand-out is Richard Boone's laid back performance as the ambiguous 'villain' Frank Usher. Unfortunately, the only female character is turned into a sex object, as one might expect of old-school westerns, but that doesn't undermine the effectiveness of the storytelling. Charles Lawton's gorgeous wide-screen photography evokes confinement and constraint amidst the wide-open scenery of the old west. Based on the Elmore Leonard short story The Captives, this is the second western in a run of six amazing collaborations between director Budd Boetticher and star Randolph Scott, known as the 'Ranown Series' (the name coming from a merging of Scott's first name and producer Harry Joe Brown's last name, which served as the name of their production company, Ranown Pictures). Like all of the Boetticher/Scott pictures, the plot is lean (Scott is taken hostage along with the daughter of a wealthy owner of a copper mine Maureen O'Sullivan who is being held for ransom by a trio of killers led by a menacing Richard Boone) but the characterizations are multi-layerd and complex. We are never given a reason why Scott lives on a large ranch all alone and without a wife, which makes his character all the more interesting, and despite the fact that Boone portrays a remorseless thief (he never actually kills anyone but has two men to his dirty work for him) his intentions are ultimately for a better, quieter, and simpler way of life, much like Scott's character. The films of Budd Boetticher may be classed simply as low budget B pictures, but there is more going on in their scant 75 minute running times than the majority of large-scale A-list Hollywood releases.
Crack Think3 2009 Movies Free
And they are alot more entertaining as well.