Man of the West [VHS]
Western auteur Anthony Mann and aging Western icon Gary Cooper team up in this stark tale of a trio of train passengers stranded in the middle of the desert after a railway holdup. Taking responsibility for his helpless compatriots (Julie London as a sad-eyed prostitute and Arthur O'Connell as a garrulous but cowardly banker), craggy-faced Link Jones (Cooper) takes them into a veritable viper's nest in a desperate gamble. It turns out the respected town elder is a former member of the outlaw gang that robbed them, and he's welcomed back by patriarchal gang leader Dock Tobin (Lee J. Cobb) like the prodigal son. The other bandits are not so forgiving but humor the old man while plotting to unmask Cooper as a devious traitor in a battle of wits and wills. Mann returns to his favorite themes of family and betrayal with a dramatic twist and wrenches up the jagged conflict with the most spare imagery of his career: the trio hiking down an endless horizon of empty track, a lone ramshackle shack on the arid plains, the desolate ghost town where Tobin's planned bank heist turns out to be a pathetic fantasy. Mann's taut direction creates a tension that hangs in the air like the sword of Damocles over the stranded travelers and explodes in cruel, raw violence. Reginald Rose (12 Angry Men) wrote the literate if sometimes overly symbolic script, and John Dehner, Jack Lord, and Royal Dano costar as Tobin's angry gang members.--Sean Axmaker