Review of Two Rode Together

Marshall McCabe(Mr J.Stewart) combines his duties as a law man with the rather less onerous task of being a pimp/entrepreneur and go - to guy.When he says "This is my town" he really means it. He is persuaded by an old friend,now a rather elderly Cavalry lieutenant (Mr R.Widmark) to assist negotiations with the Comanche for the release of prisoners captured some years earlier. He has had dealings with Chief Quannah Parker before and apparently speaks the language although all we hear is him talking in pidgin English to the chief whose vocabulary and grammar seems better than his own. A boy and a girl are returned to the settlers.The boy has totally absorbed the Comanche culture and is treated as little more than a wild animal. He stabs to death a woman who wants to believe he is her son and,despite a plot "twist" that any cinema - goer over the age of eight could have foreseen,is promptly lynched. The girl,a Mexican aristocrat,has retained her identity despite being married to warrior for five years. When her husband comes to rescue her,McCabe promptly shoots him dead,broaching an argument regarding what constitutes "rescue" and what constitutes "kidnap". McCabe has no such sensitivities. "Two rode together"is sometimes seen by critics as an apologia for the racism and misogyny they see in Mr Ford's earlier masterpiece on the same theme. Others that he rushed through it in order to start "The man who shot Liberty Vallance" where Mr Stewart seems much more at home. Personally,I think Mr Ford merely had a bad day a the office.