The Last Sunset (1961)
Wow, what a cast for a Robert Aldrich movie--Joseph Cotten, Rock Hudson, and Kirk Douglas. And the themes in this big Western are big ones, from Civil War loyalty years after the fact to love and cattle ranching. There are shootouts and rivalries, there is a good guy and a bad guy and a confusing between the two, and there is the endless feeling of having to move on, on and on, like the cattle themselves.
This is pretty late for a Western, which is to say it's late for an original Western. And so the themes here are either well worn or worn out. What keeps it going is some good acting, some pretty scenery (like the night stuff, especially), and maybe a elegiac sense, nothing poetic but relaxed and appreciative.
But there is filler, some sentimental stuff, some girl stuff where the guys ogle the girls, some Mexican stereotypes, and a gratuitous fistfight or two (Rock Hudson and Kirk Douglas really rolling around and duking it out). So as much as there are characters you sympathize with, and a lifestyle out on the open desert, it's sometimes slow going. But then, if it's not slow, it's filled with action, though sometimes mindless action.
The title? Maybe a nod to the end of an era. The next big Westerns in the 1960s were the great Italian ones, like "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly," where the archetypes become references, something to exaggerate and make more important than the plot. In "The Last Sunset" there is no self-awareness, no acknowledgement that the themes here are clichés, right down to the last duel past the tracks. It might have been daring in 1938, but for 1961 it's just well made familiarity.
Wow, what a cast for a Robert Aldrich movie--Joseph Cotten, Rock Hudson, and Kirk Douglas. And the themes in this big Western are big ones, from Civil War loyalty years after the fact to love and cattle ranching. There are shootouts and rivalries, there is a good guy and a bad guy and a confusing between the two, and there is the endless feeling of having to move on, on and on, like the cattle themselves.
This is pretty late for a Western, which is to say it's late for an original Western. And so the themes here are either well worn or worn out. What keeps it going is some good acting, some pretty scenery (like the night stuff, especially), and maybe a elegiac sense, nothing poetic but relaxed and appreciative.
But there is filler, some sentimental stuff, some girl stuff where the guys ogle the girls, some Mexican stereotypes, and a gratuitous fistfight or two (Rock Hudson and Kirk Douglas really rolling around and duking it out). So as much as there are characters you sympathize with, and a lifestyle out on the open desert, it's sometimes slow going. But then, if it's not slow, it's filled with action, though sometimes mindless action.
The title? Maybe a nod to the end of an era. The next big Westerns in the 1960s were the great Italian ones, like "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly," where the archetypes become references, something to exaggerate and make more important than the plot. In "The Last Sunset" there is no self-awareness, no acknowledgement that the themes here are clichés, right down to the last duel past the tracks. It might have been daring in 1938, but for 1961 it's just well made familiarity.