Review of The Man from Colorado

This movie probably predates the Cato, Hoover, Mackinaw, American Enterprise, etc. think tanks, but Glenn Ford as Union Col.\Colorado Judge Owen Devereaux out-thinks them all. Realizing that despite 600,000 mostly poor people just having got slaughtered in the War (and countless thousands more civilians dead or on death's door), Owen realizes there are TOO MANY regular folk around for the number of available slave-wage jobs, and too many folks smart enough to know the difference between subsidence living and solid American union wages. Therefore, Owen begins this story by gunning down 101 surrendering Confederates (who by secession have shown they think for themselves, and obviously will be impoverished agitators after losing the War). Next, he begins hanging his OWN MEN on various pretenses, right down to their teenage kid brothers, now that there are job shortages, and the people who made him hanging judge would prefer to pay one slice of bread per family member per day in wages. ALL THE RICH PEOPLE IN TOWN GO ALONG with this "class cleansing," until Owen's plan to incinerate the remaining regular folk riff-raff (and presumably replace workers with steam punk robots or Native American slaves exempted from the Emancipation Proclamation) upsets the biggest slum lord in town. Still, it's refreshing to see a movie character not beat about the bush on his WWSD (What Would Satan Do?) life principles.