RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY (70)

Directed by: Sam Peckinpah

Starring: Joel McCrea, Randolph Scott

The Pitch: In the last days of the Old West, a couple of ageing gunfighters take on a job transporting a cargo of gold.

Theo Sez: Slightly over-rated though still a notable movie, roughly the point where John Ford's boisterously macho view of the West starts to turn into the seedier, dirtier, more chaotic place of revisionist Westerns up to and including DEAD MAN. The problem, narrative-wise, is that the job undertaken by its two heroes, set up as complex and dangerous, turns out to be a McGuffin - indeed, if it weren't for the problems the characters more or less bring upon themselves, the trip would be entirely uneventful. It makes the film feel slighter than it is - in fact there's more than enough substance in its "incidentals", the themes of self-respect and morality (distinguished, it seems, from religion), the dying code of the Old West, the sordid mining town with its drunken judge and obese redheaded madam, the sheer presence of the veteran stars; but, inevitably, one looks for a central thread to link them all together. At least the handling is exemplary, Peckinpah's TV past apparent in the crisp way he races through the story (often eliding through the conventional linking bits), his future as a movie stylist presaged in the strikingly shot, remarkably vivid wedding scene.