It's no classic, but it is quite a good film. Jimmy Stewart plays a gruff, old, drunken sheriff who can speak Comanche and Richard Widmark plays a cavalryman assigned to accompany him on a mission to buy white captives away from the Comanches. The first half of the film can be called Searchers-lite. They buy back two captives, a young white man stolen in his youth and a Mexican woman stolen five years earlier. Other non-Comanches they find are unsalvageable. Now, The Searchers ends ambiguously. We're not sure what is going to happen with Natalie Wood's character. Two Rode Together goes into that part of the story a bit more. Stewart falls in love with the Mexican girl, but she cannot take the way other white people treat her. The boy is so far gone that he is entirely violent to everyone around him. The second half of the film is actually quite great, and the film has an extremely powerful climax. Jimmy Stewart is beyond excellent in the film. Could you ever imagine a bad performance from this man? It's rare that he plays such a cheating b**tard, but he's no villain, either. The actress who plays the Mexican girl is very good, too. The rest of the cast is more than adequate. There's a funny scene where Ford regulars Andy Devine and Ken Curtis fight in a slapstick fashion. Ford's direction is rather flat. The story goes that he did this only as a favor, not by any real choice. Frank Nugent's script is quite good, especially in the second half. The score is excellent. The photography is weak, but good sets and costumes make the visual aspect of the film decent if not great. 8/10.
Review of Two Rode Together
