Colorado Territory
Posted: March 30th, 2009, 2:53 pm
Will the real Joel McCrea please stand up?
McCrea plays outlaw Wes McQueen in the first rate remake of "High Sierra." McQueen has plans for one last hold up but meets a man and daughter on his stagecoach ride to Colorado. The daughter (Dorothy Malone) seems to strike a nice streak in McQueen with thoughts of maybe settling down. he certainly is smitten with her as he buys her presents. They don't know who he really is and are happy to share his frienship. Meanwhile McQueen takes up with Colorado Carlson (Virginia Mayo) and a couple of losers for the hold up. The main part deals with the planning of the hold up, character clashes within the group. All the while McQueen still visits his friends.
It's all about greed. It undoes everyone from everybody. Interesting study of how greed affect speople. McCrea is terrific as an outlaw who has a nice guy waiting to get out. There are limitations to how far he will go but is smart about how he goes about it. Great locations and some action sequences help it along. Exciting climax. Good film and i think worth your time if you like westerns.
SPOILER
One mistake I found interesting was late in the film McCrea and Mayo want to marry but they can only find a "Brother" and not a priest. In their eyes though they are now married. At the point where McCrea is trapped up in the cliffs Mayo comes riding in to try to get the posse to let her go after him. She introduces herself as "McQueen's woman" but it clearly has been dubbed over the word "wife." Somebody in the boss's office must have thought that they never actually married so they needed to change the word. Interesting moral stand for a movie about holdups and killings and such but it was 1949 and they couldn't to everything.
McCrea plays outlaw Wes McQueen in the first rate remake of "High Sierra." McQueen has plans for one last hold up but meets a man and daughter on his stagecoach ride to Colorado. The daughter (Dorothy Malone) seems to strike a nice streak in McQueen with thoughts of maybe settling down. he certainly is smitten with her as he buys her presents. They don't know who he really is and are happy to share his frienship. Meanwhile McQueen takes up with Colorado Carlson (Virginia Mayo) and a couple of losers for the hold up. The main part deals with the planning of the hold up, character clashes within the group. All the while McQueen still visits his friends.
It's all about greed. It undoes everyone from everybody. Interesting study of how greed affect speople. McCrea is terrific as an outlaw who has a nice guy waiting to get out. There are limitations to how far he will go but is smart about how he goes about it. Great locations and some action sequences help it along. Exciting climax. Good film and i think worth your time if you like westerns.
SPOILER
One mistake I found interesting was late in the film McCrea and Mayo want to marry but they can only find a "Brother" and not a priest. In their eyes though they are now married. At the point where McCrea is trapped up in the cliffs Mayo comes riding in to try to get the posse to let her go after him. She introduces herself as "McQueen's woman" but it clearly has been dubbed over the word "wife." Somebody in the boss's office must have thought that they never actually married so they needed to change the word. Interesting moral stand for a movie about holdups and killings and such but it was 1949 and they couldn't to everything.