Lawman

Jered Maddox, marshal of Bannock, rides into the neighbouring town. He carries a list of seven names: ranch hands who shot up his town while drunk and killed an old man. He means to take all of them. The town's own marshal tries to intervene and the rich rancher who owns the place proposes a deal. Maddox does not deal. The film is not interested in justice. It is interested in the blindness of a rule: Maddox is right, and because he will not bend, people who did not need to die do. The film does not make a hero of him; at the end it does not ask who gained what, it shows it. The form is late western: dusty streets, long waits, sudden brief gunfire. In keeping with the seventies view of the genre there is no romance and no heroism. Michael Winner directed. He had come from Britain to work in American genres and would make Death Wish a few years later; the hardness here is the start of that line. Burt Lancaster plays Maddox, Robert Ryan the town marshal and Lee J. Cobb the rancher. Ryan's tired lawman is the best thing in it. Who it is for: viewers who like late westerns and morally uncomfortable protagonists. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a classical western. The film is slow, bleak and leaves no room to sympathise with anyone.