BEND OF THE RIVER

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Yes, it's another of the five Westerns directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart.  

This time Stewart is Glyn McLyntock, who is helping a party of settlers get to Oregon.  Along the way they pick up Cole (Arthur Kennedy) who seems like he got up to some bad stuff during the Civil War.  Cole and McLyntock have heard of each other, suggesting that the latter too might have a history to live down, but if so the settlers are unaware of it.

Baile, the leader of the settlers, doesn't trust Cole but his daughter Laura takes a shine to him.

Anyway, the plot meanders on until we get to the crunch point, when McLyntock and Cole are overseeing the transportation of vital supplies to the settlers in their new settlement.

The problem is that a nearby camp of gold miners are prepared to pay a small fortune for the supplies.  This provides a strong incentive for the unruly hired hands who are working for McLyntock to rebel and take the supplies to the gold miners.  McLyntock can just about manage the situation until inevitably Cole betrays him, in the process revealing to Laura the sort of man he really is.

After some decent action sequences, all's well that ends well:  Cole is killed, the supplies get through to Baile and his people, and Laura realises that McLyntock is the man for her.

As with some of the other Mann/Stewart Westerns this one has a screenplay by Borden Chase, but I wouldn't say it's his finest work.

The relationship between McLyntock and Cole is similar to that between the two main characters in Sam Peckinpah's later 'Ride the High Country' but it is nowhere near as compelling.  It doesn't help that they have no friendship from the past for Cole to betray, or that Arthur Kennedy is miscast as Cole.

On more than one occasion Cole stresses the importance of ruthlessness yet at a key juncture he doesn't kill McLyntock when he has the chance.

I certainly didn't buy for one moment that Laura would be attracted to him to the extent that she is, at one point working with him in a lawless saloon, rather than being with her family and friends in their settlement. 

The actress who plays Laura doesn't bring anything special to the part, and the relationship between her and McLyntock is unmemorable.

And Rock Hudson is somewhere in the mix as a professional gambler who for no good reason throws in his lot with the settlers. 

But despite all these deficiencies Mann and Stewart manage as per usual to deliver an above-average picture even if it is not quite up to their normal high standard. 

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