À Borda da Morte

Robert Ryan, Virginia Mayo, and Jeffrey Hunter star in The Proud Ones a pretty good western from 20th Century Fox. It deals with a town marshal in a town that says it wants law and order, but is more interested in the profits that being wide open can bring.

The guy who is bringing in the profits and the lawlessness is saloon owner Robert Middleton and he's got history with Ryan from other towns. Who else has history is Hunter whose father Ryan killed a gunfight. What will happen is anyone's guess.

And if that isn't enough Ryan who sustained a wound to the scalp in a gunfight in Middleton's saloon is having recurring bouts of blindness since the incident. A lot like John Wayne was having bouts of paralysis after being wounded in El Dorado. Ryan also takes his time seeking medical attention just hoping the bad guys don't find out about it and do him in.

The Proud Ones is a nicely done adult western with a good cast giving life to characters you care about. Pay attention also to a nice performance by Walter Brennan as Ryan's deputy. With his character the producers took him and his fate from Destry Rides Again.

No western action fan could possibly complain about the shootout in a stable between Ryan, Hunter and assorted miscreants. That one was taken from High Noon. One of the best staged climaxes I've ever seen in a western.

And western fans should not miss The Proud Ones.

Robert Middleton was a big brutish character actor... We have seen him in "The Silver Chalice" opposite Paul Newman, in "Friendly Persuasion" opposite Gary Cooper and in "Love Me Tender" with Elvis Presley...

In "The Proud Ones", he is at his best as the smooth-faced and smooth-spoken saloon owner who tries to have the lawman relieved of his job in order for the town to be wide open for wild business...

Middleton makes a considerable impression as Honest John Barrett, distinctive in his dishonesty and insincere manners... He is a thief ready for anything in order to control his lucrative interests, hiring cheap crooks like George Mathews (Dillon) who results a fraud according to his rules... We see him hiring dangerous gunmen willing to slay at any time like Chico (Rodolfo Acosta), who swears to the Marshal that he will kill him one day...

The film arouses profound suspicion that we are pushed to ask ourselves why a suspicious man like the Marshal had to shoot someone apparently unarmed from behind and can we justify his action?! ¿Is he, by any chance, a 'trigger-happy' murderer?

Jeffrey Hunter performs the mistaken cowboy involved in a sinful act to avenge his father's death with the wrong man... He never believes the rectitude of the Marshal who has a questionable past... Hunter accuses him of killing his father... 'It was either him or me', exclaims Ryan, 'but I never shot an unarmed man in my life.'

The climax of the film proves clearly and openly the whole truth to the tormented young man when he confronts Barrett in a showdown... The film wakes up our attention in its development when we discover that the proud Marshall is losing the power of seeing, a serious problem considered suicidal for a lawman who has powerful enemies...

With the lovely Virginia Mayo, the good jailer Brennan and the timid O'Connell, "The Proud Ones" is a solid Western, which remembers me a similar one, "The Lonely Man" with Jack Palance and Anthony Perkins...

The Proud Ones is just that: A Western about the proud men of the Old West starring Robert Ryan and Virginia Mayo and a host of other good performers. The plot is simple: A lawman is trying to keep peace in town when the trail drovers arrive. One of them, a young cowboy with two sixguns on his hips, has a grudge against the lawman because the lawman killed his father a few years earlier in another town. Ryan, playing the lawman, takes the youth under his wings and trains him. Eventually, he comes around. But that is not the main problem. Ryan, suffering a wound, is having trouble with his eye-sight and it's effecting his work. That will pose a great problem before the movie ends.

Robert Ryan has always been a great actor. He plays the tough, hard character in nearly every film and does it as though it were as natural for him as eating dinner. And he comes through in amazing style in this Western as the lawman.

It's a really good Western with some solid Western action and, for those who are Western fans, it is one well worth viewing over and over. For the mainline theme is: How much will a man/woman do in order to retain their honor and pride? It's a question each of us have to face in life and this movie offers some good feedback about the answer.

I strongly recommend the movie to all.

My brother gave me this movie for Christmas because he knows I love Robert Ryan. There's just something about middle-aged character actors from the "golden age" of Hollywood that appeals to me; they're so cool and tough in ways that modern actors just can't match.

And this movie did not disappoint me. Ryan is great in it. He's macho and wise but also vulnerable. There were times when I was genuinely worried that the bad guys would get the upper hand over him.

In fact, quite a lot of this movie is suspenseful. It has many unexpected twists, not only in terms of "surprise" action but also character development. The constantly evolving relationship between Ryan and Jeffrey Hunter is a particular source of interest.

Even the mandatory love interest - Virginia Mayo - gets a lot of solid character development, though she does disappear from the movie for somewhat long periods of time.

Best scene? When Ryan rips into the cowardly town council. It's simply awesome.

Another great performance by the vastly underrated Robert Ryan. The entire film has a nuanced and adult tone, completely lacking from Rio Bravo, which seems to be a rip-off by Hawks. This film belongs in the company of High Noon, The Ox-bow Incident and damn few other Westerns for the intelligence and seriousness of the script. Ryan's performance alone makes this film watchable and undated, 50 years after. How many other films can say that? Also worth mentioning are the performances of Virginia Mayo as a hard headed business woman, and Walter Brennan. Brennan with hardly any lines of dialog, manages to do more with a newspaper for a prop, and with looks between him and Ryan, then most actors can do when they're chewing the scenery.