The Bravados

Jim Douglass rides into the town of Rio Arriba. There are four men in the jail and they will hang the next morning. He wants to see them; he believes they are the men who killed his wife. The sheriff allows it. That night the four escape and take a woman from the town with them. Douglass goes after them. The townsmen form a posse but he leaves them behind and rides on alone. He finds the four in turn. Henry King directs. Gregory Peck plays Douglass; Joan Collins and Stephen Boyd are in the cast. What the film builds begins as a classical revenge narrative and then turns over; in the last section the information Douglass has relied on is shaken. The matter it works at is certainty; the man does not hesitate at any stage, and that is the real subject. Religion is a marked strand; the church in the town and a scene of confession take on function in the finale. It was shot for a wide screen and the exteriors were filmed in Mexico. Gregory Peck's playing is measured and the character is nowhere sympathetic. Its limit is the supporting parts; some of the four fugitives are underwritten. Who it is for: viewers who like classic westerns and revenge narratives. Who it is not for: the pace is uneven, the women's parts functional, and the ending closes on a moral lesson.