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What can I say, the Western genre of cinema can show all facets of human behaviour well away from your traditional cowboys and Indians firing at each other.

A celebrated Gunfighter with some 15 or so kills to his name has got quite a reputation. He can't enjoy a peaceful drink at the saloon without some loudmouth egged on by alcohol and machoness trying to put one over on him!

We see the Gunfighter in question, Jimmy Ringo (Gregory Peck) face such a confrontation being chased by three vengeful brothers of such a cowboy being macho, Eddie and who faced the mortal consequences of it.

Ringo rides to a town called Cayenne where the rest of the film takes place. A peaceful town not used to such incidents! Well not yet anyway.

Ringo is determined to meet a former lover and their young son who reside in the town all the time looking at the clock at the thought of the three brothers arriving. In that respect it is reminiscent of High Noon which I didn't realise was released two years later than this film.

The end is the highlight of the film as Ringo meets the three vengeful brothers and passes on his notoriety to one of them and becoming forgiven for his own sins in the process.

Probably the first 'mature' western that veers away from the classical western stories and has more adult elements.

Well, I had not particularly heard of this film but could see it was highly rated and included in the 1001 Movies You Should Watch book.

It has Giant as a title and a gigantic running time of some 201 minutes. Real epic territory. In fact looking into this film everything is Giant. The cast, crew everything.

The plot follows the life of a Texan family from the 1920s up until it's release in the late 1950s. In the twenties people made their living on the vast cattle ranches in Texas however oil becomes King and a drill, baby drill mantra seems to change the local population along with the wealth it brought.

Texas is also border territory with Mexico and their is a small racism issue in the plotline that keeps rearing it's ugly head with the character of Bick (Rod Hudson) changing his attitude over the years from a rich and somewhat abrupt cattle rancher to proud grandfather to a son who marries a Mexican towards the last act.

Some three hours plus films can drag and I was surprised that my attention to this film was full throughout. Perhaps half an hour could have been edited from the run time but I had no complaints in this respect.

When I think of Elizabeth Taylor I immediately think about her fiery relationship with Richard Burton so I was pleasantly surprised with her matriarch role in this film.

Behind the camera there are some stellar crew including music, cinematography of the Texan landscape and director duties from George Stevens.

I thought I had seen all there is to know about Westerns over the years but I was pleasantly surprised with this offering its themes, tropes which were to be repeated several times again in the genre over the next few decades.

It's not a Western I had particularly heard of so I gave it a go and as I have already said it left me surprised at just how good it was. I should have known I was in for a treat with Western aficionados attached to the film such as director Anthony Mann and lead actor Gary Cooper.

The main theme is that of an aging outlaw character played by Cooper who has a criminal past but now has turned over a new leaf as such. It straight away got me thinking about Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven (1992) as the William Munny character again an aging outlaw.

Other tropes were the interior scenes. They reminded me instantly of The Hateful Eight (2015) from Quentin Tarantino and the Stagecoach stop. In this film it is not a Stagecoach stop as such but a farmhouse near to a railway line in which Link Jones (Cooper) finds himself deserted on. (Watch the film for a full explanation!)

The colour, cinemascope photography is another plus and adds to Mann's location shoots in much the way a John Ford Western film does.

Yes, Gary Cooper was old as in Liam Neeson in some of his action films but it provides some back story to develop.