Gary Cooper has never ridden better and Walter Brennan been more villainous than in this film directed by William Wyler and lensed by Gregg Toland that holds its own with the best of John Ford oaters. In the finest of their many excellent teamings together they form an uneasy bond based ironically on sentimentality in the most unforgiving part of the Texas West.
Cole Hardin (Cooper) is accused of being a horse thief before Judge Roy Bean (Brennan), aka the hanging judge. Employing his kangaroo methodology Bean sentences Hardin to hang but is spared by preying on the judge soft spot regarding stage actress Lily Langtry. Concocting a lie Cole saves literally saving his neck and the two enter into an uneasy alliance that deal from locks of hair to range wars.
Wyler and Toland's mise en scene in both suffocating court room bar interiors and Hardin's panoramic gallops across the prairie have a dusty vitality where the compositions inform with tension, energy and a gallows humor that befits the scales of justice West of the Pecos. Fronting this grand canvas Brennan and Cooper as Bean and Hardin maintain a weary bond throughout; Cooper an impossible to dislike aw' shucks duplicity about him while Brennan though a monster,( vividly brought forth in long cold prolonged stares) remains at the same time highly sympathetic.
It is only in the waning minute after the climatic final scene of an odd mix of comedy and beautifully choreographed gunfight The Westerner takes a sentimental bullet to the heart that kills what has been up until that moment an all around exhilarating western.
Cole Hardin (Cooper) is accused of being a horse thief before Judge Roy Bean (Brennan), aka the hanging judge. Employing his kangaroo methodology Bean sentences Hardin to hang but is spared by preying on the judge soft spot regarding stage actress Lily Langtry. Concocting a lie Cole saves literally saving his neck and the two enter into an uneasy alliance that deal from locks of hair to range wars.
Wyler and Toland's mise en scene in both suffocating court room bar interiors and Hardin's panoramic gallops across the prairie have a dusty vitality where the compositions inform with tension, energy and a gallows humor that befits the scales of justice West of the Pecos. Fronting this grand canvas Brennan and Cooper as Bean and Hardin maintain a weary bond throughout; Cooper an impossible to dislike aw' shucks duplicity about him while Brennan though a monster,( vividly brought forth in long cold prolonged stares) remains at the same time highly sympathetic.
It is only in the waning minute after the climatic final scene of an odd mix of comedy and beautifully choreographed gunfight The Westerner takes a sentimental bullet to the heart that kills what has been up until that moment an all around exhilarating western.