Vogelfrei

Just one, before our aging outlaw's final retirement and start of a new life.

But there are complications--crafty colleagues, traitor accomplices and--women.

One woman turns out to be helpful, the other merely selfish. But that's just the start of our antihero's problems.

It's a Raoul Walsh film, and by golly, if any director knew how to make a movie move, it's Walsh. Made the same year as his classic, "White Heat," this western also ends with an "On Top o' the World" finale.

Joel McCrea is an intriguing actor. A sort of neutral entity that could be cast in any kind of role and come off looking and sounding natural and acceptable. No one ever especially went to see, nor stayed away from a picture because of him. He was just there, always doing a dependable job. And what an array of fine directors used him.

Likewise, Virginia Mayo is a solid pro, and this role allows her more opportunity than merely being decorative. Her character work is most convincing.

Taking what could have been a routine script, Walsh turns it into a picture that, once one starts watching, one cannot stop till the end. It moves, surprises and stimulates.

Some directors just have it, and Walsh is clearly strutting his stuff in "Colorado Territory."

Raoul Walsh was perhaps the most entertaining director of the '40's, with movies like "Objective, Burma!", "They Died with Their Boots On" and "Gentleman Jim" behind his name, plus he also made some good early westerns. Sounds like the perfect guy to direct a movie like this, especially since this movie is a western remake of his earlier directed movie classic "High Sierra", with Humphrey Bogart and Ida Lupino. This movie might not be as 'star-filled' as the original but it's just as entertaining, arousing and intriguing on its own.

Westerns from the '40's were much different from the later spaghetti-westerns everybody knows. The early westerns from the '40's and the decades before that are a bit forgotten movies, probably mainly because they differ so much from the later westerns from the '60's and '70's that everybody from that- and later generations, basically grew up with. Westerns from the '40's were much darker and possibly less formulaic. This movie is basically more 'film-noir' than real western. It has all the basic film-noir ingredients in it; Backstabbing characters, treacherous woman, a criminal plot and mysterious unpredictable characters. It makes this movie also real perfect to watch for persons who don't like spaghetti-westerns.

Leave it up to director Raoul Walsh to tell a story well and entertaining. The story of "Colorado Territory" really isn't the most spectacular story you could think of but the way it is told and brought to the screen all can be called spectacular. The movie is filled with some real good action sequences and spectacular looking stunts. But granted that the storytelling is not completely flawless. The movie is perhaps a bit too short and the love story of the movie also doesn't quite work out as good as it could had been. I don't know, for some reason it just doesn't feel right, or connects with the rest of the movie.

The storytelling also makes sure that the movie remains for most part unpredictable, which also helps to make the film-noir elements work out. "Colorado Territory" is a rare both unpredictable and entertaining movie.

The cast is solid. It isn't filled with the most known actors of its period. Perhaps Errol Flynn was expected to play a role in this, since he worked a lot with Raoul Walsh in the '40's but instead the main part is played by Joel McCrea, who was an expert at playing characters in westerns. He plays a good and convincing tough-guy who has a good heart. Perhaps a bit too much of a good heart to make the story entirely believable but that's just common and entirely fitting for '40's movie-making standards.

An interesting to watch- and spectacular entertaining noir-western, that just like its original version "High Sierra", deserves to be seen.

8/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

Joel McCrea stars as the outlaw Wes McQueen who makes one last train robbery in Raoul Walsh's exceptional and sprawling Western remake of his own "High Sierra." As many commentators have pointed out, "Colorado Territory" is a major improvement over "High Sierra", a better-than-average Bogart vehicle marred by John Huston' tepidly moralizing screenplay. Walsh's breathtaking use of the landscape (especially toward the end) in "Colorado Territory" makes it more fascinating and exciting work. Walsh's heroes are often characterized by adventure. McCrea's Wes McQueen recalls such Walsh protagonists as Eddie Bartlett, George Custer, Gentleman Jim, Capt. Nelson, and Jeb Rand. They have a way of going too far. They are really existentialist heroes. Walsh's depiction of McQueen and his loyal bad girl's (Virginia Mayo) final descent into self-destruction is truly grim and pessimistic. Although "Colorado Territory" is devoid of the psychoanalytic verve of Walsh's "Pursued"(arguably his greatest Western), it is nonetheless a brilliant and memorable film that needs more following and appreciation.

This is as superb western by a director who knows his stuff. Raoul Walsh hasn't received the credit he deserves and this film is all but forgotten. It doesn't have any big stars or overacting, agreed, and perhaps people are looking for Oscar material rather than a great film. It's their loss. The film covers much territory (no pun intended) but certainly not too much and the many surprises work quite well. The characters' motives unravel as the film progresses, the way they should work. There aren't any easy answers here and the clichés are nowhere to be found, unlike so many by-the-numbers westerns. This is an action film from the beginning and keeps things going until the very end. It should be much better known.

Curtis Stotlar

Colorado Territory is undoubtedly one of the best films directed by Raoul Walsh.In fact it's sort of a remake of a film Walsh directed 10 years before this one – High Sierra with Humphrey Bogart and Ida Lupino.

Colorado Territory's story revolves around a very sympathetic outlaw Wes McQueen (Joel McCrea) who is finally caught and put in jail but obviously not for a very long time, cause his former companions devise a plan to rob the train and are most certainly in need of him to be able to pull it off successfully. So they help him to escape. After Wes succeeds in doing so he finds a refuge in a distant abandoned village in the mountains where he meets his partners together with a spirited and beautiful woman Colorado (Virginia Mayo) who ends up falling in love with him not knowing that his heart already belongs to another very different woman Julie Ann (Dorothy Malone) who in her turn, doesn't know about Wes McQueen being one of the most sought after outlaws in the west. The question now is not who stays with the girl, but who stays with the guy in the most fateful and poignant film's ending. 8/10