THE MAN FROM LARAMIE

James Stewart is Will Lockhart, the man from Laramie, in this 1955 Western, 

He arrives in a town called Coronado with supplies he is delivering, and so as to avoid returning home empty-handed he and his men are loading salt from some salt flats when they are interrupted by a local hothead and a load of cowhands.  

The hothead, Dave, summarily has Lockhart's wagons burned and his mules shot dead.

So OK this is now going to be a film about how Lockhart gets revenge, right?  Well, not exactly.  

It is indeed a film about revenge but not in the way it first appears.  The real reason why Lockhart has come to Coronado is to find the person who sold rifles to the local Apaches, because those rifles were used to massacre a cavalry troupe, including Lockhart's brother.

This does rather beg the question of why Lockhart needed to come to the town with supplies, and then seemed to be planning to go straight back to Laramie, but best not to worry, the plot is not this film's strongest suit.

So, who's the guilty party?  Is it Dave, although he doesn't seem to have the brains for it?

A more likely suspect is Dave's pa, old Mr Waggoman, a widower who owns most of everything in Coronado, and who seems to enjoy suspiciously friendly relations with the nearby Apaches.

Or could it be Mr Waggoman's foreman, Vic (played by dependable Arthur Kennedy), who looks up to his boss as a kind of father figure and who has been promised some of the old man's inheritance?  

Vic is also planning to marry Mr Waggoman's niece Barbara, so everything in the garden looks fine for him except that he has the unenviable job of keeping Dave under control, not easy given that Dave resents the favour his pa bestows on Vic.  And is Mr Waggoman simply stringing Vic along, as Barbara suspects?

In other words this is a volatile psychological powder keg Lockhart has barged into.  

He has an ally in the form of Kate, a feisty old lady who also owns a cattle ranch.  Back in the dim and distant past she was engaged to be married to Mr Waggoman, and even now she still carries a torch for him even though he won't give her the time of day.

Inevitably things build to an exciting series of events, starting with a very nasty scene where Dave deliberately shoots Lockhart's hand at point-blank range whilst he is being restrained.  

Implausibly it turns out that it was Vic and Dave working together who sold  the rifles to the Apaches, and they still have a very large number hidden away.  There are far too many rifles to all be sold to the Apaches (who knows what they might do with them?) but when hothead Dave wants to do this anyway he and Vic get into a fight which ends with Vic killing Dave. 

Naturally everyone thinks Lockhart is the killer, although to be fair to Vic he tries to discourage this line of thought.  But then Vic's problems get worse when Mr Waggoman twigs that there are a load of rifles hidden on his land.  In trying to stop him finding them Vic manages to accidentally kill his boss (see what I mean about the plot?).

This leads to a final confrontation between Lockhart and Vic which ends with the Apaches killing Vic.  

The ending is a copout in that the film wants us to believe that nice James Stewart can't bring himself to kill Vic, but in effect he does do this by delivering Vic to the Apaches.

During the course of the film an attraction has been developing between Lockhart and Barbara, so that now Vic is out of the way Barbara is free to look up Lockhart in Laramie any time she is passing through - and we're left in little doubt that she will be doing exactly that once she has settled her affairs in Coronado.

And on a further happy note, Mr Waggoman and Kate are now reconciled, mainly because he is now blind (!) and needs someone to look after him.

This is the fifth and final Western Stewart made with director Anthony Mann and it's a fine one to bow out on.  Despite my odd quibble about the plot this is a superior film of its type, thanks to the psychological complexities, the spectacular Cinemascope cinematography which shows the landscapes to great advantage, and Mann's dextrous handling of a complicated story.

The acting is all fine as well. James Stewart is always good of course even if he was closer in age to Aline MacMahon (who plays Kate) than he was to Cathy O'Donnell (who plays Barbara).  The latter is especially well cast - she is almost as affecting here as she is as Wilma in 'The Best Years of Our Lives'.

RATING: ✓✓ Good Times