Product: Westbound (1959)
Rating: 4.0
Lesser Boetticher/Scott western is still well above average
In 1864, Union cavalry Captain John Hayes (Randolph Scott) is commissioned to head up a new daily overland stage operation between California and Julesburg, Colorado, to bring both mail and gold east for the Union (yet for some reason the film is titled "Westbound"; I guess "Eastbound" wouldn't be a compelling title for a western). Hayes is very familiar with Julesburg, the place he lost his sweetheart Norma (Virginia Mayo) to hotel owner and local big man Clay Putnam (John Duggan). On arriving in town, he finds it to be full of Confederate sympathizers, chief among them Putnam and his gunslinging right-hand man Mace (Michael Pate), and he finds few sympathetic to his own cause besides one-armed soldier Rod Miller (Michael Dante) and his wife Jeanie (Karen Steele), and a few broken-down old drivers and sodbusters. Soon things turn violent, but will the town of Julesburg turn a blind eye because of it's southern sympathies, or will it end up supporting the honorable Hayes and his attempts to just run a stage line?The fourth of the seven collaborations between director Budd Boetticher and star Randolph Scott, WESTBOUND is generally considered the weakest, and was dismissed by the director himself as something that should have gone riding into the ocean. It's not that bad at all, though I suppose I'd agree with the conventional wisdom. The major problem is that the basic screenplay and story (by Berne Giler and Albert S. LeVino) just aren't that compelling; we've seen loads of town overlords who employ amoral gunslingers to do their dirty work, and neither Clay Putnam nor his wife are particularly well-developed. And the film rushes by in a way that belies the obviously fairly expensive (at least for Boetticher) production - it's glossy and beautifully photographed in very bright Technicolor (by J. Peverell Marley), and yet it feels undeveloped and far too short at 72 minutes to really explore some of the interesting underlying themes very much at all. One thing I liked is that there's a subtle contrast between the one-armed "half a man" Rod, and the weak and amoral Clay, and their marriages to strong women - but that doesn't really go anywhere, and Mayo in particular is underused.But as I say, the color is great - though I must mention that it's a bit TOO glossy overall, and this is one of those westerns where the women all look like they've come out of 50s glamour shoots - and Boetticher's shot selection and direction of actors is excellent all around. There are some memorable moments, like a 30-second street-level shot of several men moving towards a fallen and dying man, a stagecoach robbery that goes all wrong, and a stampede in the rain, and Boetticher manages to get a few of his typically terse and funny bits of dialogue in as well. And Scott is really quite good, dominating the action in a way he didn't always need to do - it's as if here he knows the material isn't that good, and so he steps it up a little bit. It's interesting to see him play a Union officer; I've seen him play Confederates several times, but I'm not sure I've seen him wearing the blue. The music by David Buttolph sounds like it could be from any western, it's just so..."generic"...but it's fine, if a little too lively for the dark turn the story ends up taking. And the ending of the film, with Scott in a rather ambivalent place as regards both of the main female characters, is kind of neat.This is a no-frills Warner Archive disc and as such the "chapters" are just breaks at each 10-minute mark, and there are no extras at all; but it plays fine, and the print is in good shape, and it's correctly presented at 1.85:1. Certainly nobody should be rushing to get this before they've got the first Boetticher/Scott collaboration,Seven Men From Nowor theThe Films of Budd Boetticherbox set containing the other five. But if you've got and love those, this film though just a bit less impressive, is essential.