The Hard Man

Just the thing for a lazy Sunday afternoon - like all those TV westerns from 50s/60s which this reviewer found when perhaps more impressionable - when men were Men, spoke deep, dressed clean and drew sixguns easy fast. The story/plot in detail is (surely ?) corny ridiculous soap - to this nonAmerican anyhow - but, once that is accepted, this film can entertain as a straight "shoot 'em, cowboy" with a hero in the Hollywood tradition of the (semi-official) vigilante from the Lone Ranger to the Dark Knight. Definitely competently acted and made q well enough, this film is a nice reminder of how the fun Western used to be. Canadian Lorne Green went on to greater fame; going by this movie, Madison and French were unlucky not to do same.

"The hard man" is an exciting little B western where a fast gun deputy is confronted to the despotic rich Lorne Greene, who has some geat nasty lines. There are a lot of sleazy details, rather uncommon in westerns. Guy Madison is very charismatic as a gunslinger. Sherman's direction is competent, with efficient editing. Don't miss that Guy Madison / Lorne Greene confrontation.

Steve Burden is a former lawman released for bringing in too many wanted men dead. The aging Sheriff of El Solito wants Steve for his Deputy and Steve takes the job knowing the last outlaw he killed was framed in El Solito. Looking for the man that framed him it appears that Rice Martin who controls El Solito is his man and Steve is quickly in trouble when Martin sends a man to kill him.

The Hard Man is an entertaining b-western starring Guy Madison in the title role and that toughness is needed when he takes on Lorne Greene's gun thugs. There's some fistfights, gunplay but the focus is more on drama, especially around Lorne Greene and Valerie French who plays his wife. But it's not a marriage made in heaven. Valerie, in a role similar to the cheating wife in Jubal, wraps her fingers around men in order to get them to kill Ben Cartwright ... sorry I mean Lorne Greene's character. Has she finally fallen for Guy Madison? Will she settle down with Guy or not? You got to watch this western that has some tense moments and involving dialogue. Lorne Greene sort of steals every scene he is in as a power mad rancher. The finale where Madison doesn't know who the gun man is and is jumpy at every sound is quite tense, and the twist at the end is good.

This is a very poor western; I found it difficult to watch. For the first 80% or so, it has a ridiculous, pompous, almost juvenile, turgid screenplay. A second strike against it is that it is bad despite its decent production values and cast. One interesting aspect is that it is unlike most poor movies which often start out as an intriguing, entertaining situation, but are eventually found out for what they are when it's silly plot plays out for all to see. But this movie reverses that -- things actually improve in the end.

Typical of the many embarrassing plot contrivances is when Valerie French, the wife of the overwhelmingly richest man in town, sneaks into Guy Madison's room. She walks up to him (a complete stranger to her); they embrace and she offers to hook up with him if he'll take her from her husband! In another silly scene, Lorne Greene (the husband) is in a Guy Madison-friendly place at night, and he tells Madison that he has hired someone to kill Madison. By all rights Madison could safely and should have killed Greene right there, but no.

Some decent scenes at and near the end of the movie do NOT redeem it: (1) there was a fun, campy whose-afraid-of-Virginia-Wolf-type scene between Greene, French and Greene's lawyer (who is involved with French). They let it all hang out. Greene leaves a gun near the other two; French grabs it, points it at Greene and clicks the trigger, but Greene deliberately left it there unloaded. Still Greene won't let his wife leave him! And (2) there is a suspenseful shoot-out at the end, which leads to a twist in the story.

Guy Madison plays the title role in The Hard Man, a rather ruthless deputy sheriff who prefers to bring in his fugitives draped over the saddle. Saves a lot of judicial proceedings that way. But when an old friend he's sent to track down tries to outdraw him, Madison is forced to shoot Myron Healey who's been accused of murder. Before Healey dies he gives Madison a convincing story he was framed.

Shooting down a friend who may have been innocent sends Madison off to a nearby town looking for answers. All lines of inquiry lead to cattle baron Lorne Greene and his wife Valerie French.

I don't think Lorne Greene was cast as Ben Cartwright in Bonanza on the strength of this role. Greene's a mean one here, a guy who has increased his herd through rustling and he's got a nice batch of gunfighters on the payroll to keep questions to a minimum.

However Valerie French who played Ernest Borgnine's unfaithful wife in Jubal plays exactly the same kind of part here. She's looking for a way out of her marriage, one way or the other. Both these issues figure prominently into why Healey was killed.

The Hard Man is a nicely done adult type western with some solid performances by Madison and the rest of the cast. With some bigger name players this film would be more known, but I can't fault anyone either behind or in front of the camera for their work.