Justice pour un innocent

In the 1930s before he made it big with Stagecoach, John Wayne made a lot of low-budget B westerns. Most are entirely forgettable and some are even terrible. But the one constant in all of them was Duke's wonderful screen presence. This is one of those westerns. The plot's about an escaped convict (Wayne) who heads out west to prove his innocence by finding the man who really committed the crime he was convicted of. There's some surprisingly good stunt work in this, some of it by Duke himself. I also liked some of the twists the plot takes that keeps it from being a standard black hat vs white hat horse opera. Very good of its type.

It was in films like Sagebrush Trail that John Wayne learned his craft, but thank the Deity he got out of doing stuff like Sagebrush Trail.

The Duke has busted loose from jail, he was in the calaboose for a murder he didn't commit. He eludes a posse chasing him, but gets into the clutches of an outlaw gang headed by Yakima Canutt. It's as good a place as any to look for the man who can clear him. He doesn't realize though how lucky he got.

Now granted this was a Lone Star production, not even a B film. But I would have liked to have seen just how Wayne got into the jackpot that landed him jail for murdering the lover of a married woman if he wasn't involved with her. When we do find who the murderer is that's never explained to us.

Since this was for the afternoon kiddie matinée crowd maybe such things weren't delved into even before the Code came in place. Maybe it was a question of sloppy editing also.

I think John Wayne's most devoted fans might like this one, I really wouldn't recommend to others, even other western fans.

While it is rather slow at times, and not always plausible, in general this is not bad at all for a B-Western. It's interesting to see John Wayne in one of his earlier roles, and while he's hardly yet become "The Duke" in this one, he's likable and worth seeing. The setup is interesting, and while the movie does not get everything it could have out of the possibilities, it still has enough going on to hold your attention.

Wayne plays a character who was unjustly convicted of murder, and who has broken out of prison in order to look for the real killer. He runs across a gang of outlaws, and when he begins to realize that things are different than he thought they were, he is faced with some real dilemmas. Later on in his career, Wayne could have done much more with this kind of role, but here he is at least always sympathetic. Although it misses some opportunities to make things more interesting, there should be enough story and action to make this one worthwhile if you enjoy older Westerns.

An American Western; A young man was sentenced for a murder he did not commit, but he escapes from prison determined to find the real killer. Joining an outlaw gang hiding out in an abandoned mine, he attempts to disrupt the outlaw gang's robberies and comes closer to finding his man. This feature, with a shorter running time, establishes character and plot effectively. But, the actors gave uninterested performances, and it has a thin storyline. The action sequences are impressive and the stunts are first rate. The sound design is impactful with scenes of thundering hooves and realistic gunfire report.

Released in 1933, this movie stars John Wayne as a very young and unpolished actor. His character is John Brant, a man wrongly convicted and imprisoned for murder. He decides that his only hope is to escape and find the real killer, which may have been an original plot device in 1933 but is now well worn. After he escapes, he eludes two law officers and meets outlaw Bob Jones, who introduces him to an outlaw gang living in an abandoned mine. Determined not to make his situation worse, Brant warns of upcoming robberies to be carried out by the gang and predictably starts a romance with a local store clerk. The plot unfolds in a manner that can be foreseen, the romance continues, Brant commits no other crimes and at the end, his newfound friend confesses to the murder that Brant is accused of. It of course ends with a kiss between Brant and his newfound love interest. There is one very amusing aspect of this movie and that is the number of rounds that the men sometimes fire without reloading. Their guns are closer to sixteen shooters rather than the standard six. This is a movie that you watch because it is a John Wayne western and no other reason.