"I don't 'spect there's any way to get that gold without going' over you..."

DVDs:

	• Seven Men From Now (Special Collector's Edition) Randolph Scott, Gail Russell Paramount, 2005 average customer review:based on 51 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

7 men from now

If you like good old westerns then you will probably like this movie. It's Not one of the greatest but a good solid B western (based on budget not quality). I gave it 4 stars because I like both Lee Marvin and Randolf Scott, the interaction between them is great. I think Scott is an underrated actor who never got the credit he deserves. He is somewhat of the same stoic cowboy style as Clint Eastwood. Scott has some great one liners through out the movie, like when the young cavalry comander recomends Scott move on as the indians are on the warpath, Scott says, "Its worse than that-they are hungry." One different effect among many is that you see Scott go for his gun but you never see him shoot someone. In this movie Scott plays a X-lawman who hunts down bandits who killed his wife. This movie is one of seven westerns(with Scott)produced by Budd Boetticher.

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The villain and the heroine make the hero a more interesting character...

Like McCrea, Scott did not become exclusively a Westerner until the mid-forties, but once established he became a Western star of distinction, achieving his best and most interesting roles as his career matured...

Scott was a great gentleman... It was simple for him to do the part because it was indeed the prime quality he brought to his many roles as lawman or lone rider... Scott's best work was the group of seven movies he made with director Budd Boetticher in the fifties...In these he obtained a new stature as the lone figure on a mission of vengeance or similar private quest, becoming a tougher, more forceful character, the archetype of the much-parodied image... As we all know, a man's actions are what make the man, and over and over again, Scott believed in courage... He believed in conspicuous displays of courage... And finally he rounded off this splendid climax to a long career by starring with Joel McCrea in "Ride the High Country."

Boetticher's style was marvelously simple and economical, sticking closely to the same plots, locations and character types in each of his Westerns and stressing movement and action rather than ideas...

Budd Boetticher's "Seven Men From Now" is 78 minutes... And as concise as this great Western is, it has four really well-developed characters traveling through Apache country; beautiful storytelling; takes full advantage of the location; and there are a lot of narrative incidents...

Ben Stride (Scott) represents a man whose wife has been killed and he's going to go out and seek revenge... But his style is ramrod straight and not very interesting... The killers that Stride is after are all opportunists... They are men who had broken the law... Boetticher introduces a sympathetic bad man, Bill Masters (Lee Marvin) who had been put in jail twice by the ex-Sheriff... But you get the sense that Masters wouldn't kill a woman... That's not what he has in mind... But, surely, he wants the $20,000 in gold from the strongbox... Ultimately, he had to test himself up against Ben Stride in the final confrontation: the stronger villain against the stronger hero...

Lee Marvin stole the show... He had all the little tricks, and twitches, and schemes... He is magnetic, especially in one key scene on that stormy night, when he gets inside the covered wagon, asking for a cup of hot black coffee...Tension mounts when he tells John Greer (Walter Reed) that his wife is beautiful... He wanted to get on Stride's nerves... And some tension grew between the three characters...

Annie Greer (Gail Russell) was the object of desire... She was wonderful foil, essential, torn between two men... Obviously her character quite quickly falls for Scott's character... Her husband--who seems weak--turns out to be stronger than we thought... Stride let his own life down because he was too proud... We hear him says: "A man ought to be able to take care of his woman." This is the line that's submitted to a test by the whole action and script and direction of the movie...

One last note: Without sacrificing any of the traditional action elements, there was somehow an extra dimension to the Boetticher Westerns; they had a biting, underplayed quality, the kind of films one would have expected had John Huston (in his prime) suddenly decided to become a director of Westerns...

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"I don't 'spect there's any way to get that gold without going' over you..."

There's nothing unique or outstanding about the plot of Seven Men From Now, yet it's one of those formulaic films where somehow everything works so well that the whole film is elevated to a higher level. For several decades now the rarest of the Randolph Scott-Budd Boetticher Westerns, it makes a virtue of its tight 75-minute running time while still finding time to throw in some good plot twists as Scott's ex-sheriff hunts down the men responsible for his wife's murder while a top-of-his-game Lee Marvin is the friendly enemy tracking down the bad men for the $20,000 they stole and not too particular what he does or who he kills to get it.

The widescreen transfer is good considering the condition of the master materials and the amount of restoration work needed, while there's a good selection of extras too. Well worth tracking down.

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First in a great series of westerns with no low points

This first teaming of star Randolph Scott & director Budd Boetticher also finds them working from a script by Burt Kennedy - his very first screenplay, and impressive enough that he worked with this team three more times, eventually moving on to a prolific - if not quite exciting - directorial career himself.

All the elements are in place: the lone, upright and indomitable man, with the tragic past and a taste for vengeance that keeps him going against all odds...a woman, no freer than he but just as determined, in her own way....her weak husband, prey to the villains that made off with the gold....a charismatic nemesis who may or may not be one of the killers that the hero has vowed vengeance on....seven bad men who must be brought to justice - his kind of justice.

OK that makes it sound hokey, but let's face it an awful lot of westerns sound that way if you reduce them to basics. What makes this one stand out? The terrific widescreen color photography (by William Clothier) and Boetticher's exquisite framing and graceful camera movements -- little rapid cutting here, no scenes that don't play out as long as they need to, and yet the whole comes in at a perfect 78 minutes. The subtle sexual nuances between ex-sheriff Ben Stride (Scott) and strong-willed Annie Greer (Gail Russell) who Stride has joined with and is helping out - despite the presence of her weak husband John (Walter Reed)...the fabulous performance of Lee Marvin as Bill Masters, a likable rogue who may or may not be involved in the crime that took Stride's wife, the participants in which he will hunt down unto death.

Boetticher does a lot with a smallish budget and the 50s standards of what you could show; his first action sequence is a tense little moment under a rock with Stride coming upon two men in the rain and stopping for coffee with them, until he finds out....and then we cut away as the shots ring out. The tension is built and released, and we really don't need to see the same standard gun play in every scene - so he doesn't give it to us. We have off-screen shots, quick cutaways between shooters, a reaction shot or two of victims without seeing the shots fired, a dynamic use of space in the many canyon sequences leads to odd angles and unpredictable shots -- really he does more with the few gunfights in this film than many directors did in whole careers.

The characters, too, are beautifully developed from small nuances. Scott, typically, is the strong and stoic type, but the sexual tension expressed in all the early scenes between him and Russell is extraordinarily powerful with just an eyebrow, a smile communicating all we need. Marvin, too, is attracted to the sole female in this male world (apart from a very brief bar scene) but his is a predatory view, albeit couched in a touch of civility. His flamboyant dress, flip attitude, and egotism pretty much steal the show and make his final standoff with our hero all the more memorable, because we actually care at least a little about him.

In the end, the hero must go it alone, and whether he prevails or not, and whether the woman he has come to love will be free - and willing - to meet him if he does survive the last showdown -- all that I will not reveal. See it for yourself, it's easily one of the best westerns of the 50s and a great start to a series of films that continued on a remarkably high level.

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