THE BRAVADOS

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Gregory Peck made six films with director Henry King, two of them Westerns: this one and 'The Gunfighter'.

The film starts off in Rio Arriba, a small town close to the Mexican border, where Jim Douglass (Peck) arrives in order to see four bad guys hanged the next day.  I guess these are the bravados of the title although I'm not sure it's an appropriate description, since according to my dictionary a bravado is an obsolete word for a swaggerer.

Certainly at the start of the film they're not doing a lot of swaggering in their prison cell but things look up for them when they escape, taking with them a young woman, Emma  as a hostage.

The rest of the film concerns the efforts of the posse to rescue Emma and bring the bravados to justice, dead or alive.  Very quickly Douglass takes charge of proceedings, and one by one he catches up with the bravados and kills them, but not before trying (in vain) to get them to confess to murdering his wife some six months earlier.

This all builds to a satisfying and surprising conclusion in which Douglass catches up with the last bravado and discovers the truth about who killed his wife (spoiler alert: don't always trust your neighbour).

The film ends with a scene between Douglass and a priest in which Douglass is agonising over his behaviour in killing three men for a crime they didn't commit.  As far as the townspeople are concerned though, he's a hero.

The story has some aspects that didn't totally convince.  Douglass's ranch is surprisingly near to the town given that early on in the film we learn that Douglass has been tracking the gang for several months. It's also a big coincidence that the gang happen to come upon Douglass's neighbour.  It's never explained how Douglass, who is a rancher,  is so handy with a gun, or so good at tracking.  And the film is rather coy as to what Emma's fate eventually is - it's clearly bad but I have to take Wikipedia's word for it that she is raped but not murdered.

Leaving these minor quibbles aside, and that Joan Collins, who plays a love interest of sorts, doesn't need to be in the film at all, it's an above-average effort, competently made all round, with Peck in fine brooding form, and some quality cinematography courtesy of Leon Shamroy, who shares the record for most Oscar nominations. 

RATING: ✓ Cheers

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