La vengeance du shérif

"It's you and me Billy against the whole town!" Young Billy Young (Robert Walker Jr.) learns the hard way that he shouldn't mess with the stubborn but smarter Deputy Ben Kane (Robert Mitchum) and if you can't beat 'em, you may as well join 'em. It takes almost the entire film to realize that Deputy Kane has his personal reason(s) for trying to bring law and order to the local town. But Deputy Kane is up against the richest cattle rancher in a man named Boone (John Anderson) in the the territory who has hired the most hired hands and the best guns money can buy.

To keep this western interesting so that their male audience did not lose their attention the producers included a sexy saloon girl named Lily Beloit (Angie Dickinson) as the love interest of Deputy Kane. There is a memorable scene in the film in the latter half when Lily Beloit decides to take a bubble bath in her cabin and all Deputy Kane (the gentleman) can do to contain himself is to go out and get firewood and stoke the fire. Now this scene alone with Angie Dickinson in the bubble bath is worth watching this 1969 film for any teenage boy which is what I was when this film was first released.

The film moves along at a good clip with lots of gunfighting, and a good versus evil plot. I give the film a decent 6 out of 10 IMDB rating.

Billy Young and Jesse Boone (David Carradine) sneak onto a troop train and kill a Mexican General and his men. Billy loses his horse and is left behind with Mexican troops hot on Jesse's tail. Ben Kane (Robert Mitchum) is on his way to be a deputy sheriff and meets Billy. Ben is only allowed to be a tax collector. While in town, Billy gets into a fight over cards, kills the sheriff and gets run out of town. Billy runs into Ben Kane again. In town, Kane confronts John Behan and dancehall girl Lily Beloit (Angie Dickinson) offers her help alluding to an old incident. Jesse's father Frank Boone killed Ben's son.

This movie needs a darker harder edge. The material is geared more towards that end but the movie seems intent on making this a fun western. The light tones and music are ill-fitting. Also it's too precious with Ben's past. It should have explained the backstory much earlier which would have given the characters more compelling interactions. It would raise the stakes. By leaving the reveal so late, the characters don't have the connections. Ben and Billy should have stayed together but they keep bumping into each other haphazardly. They really need the time together to develop the needed chemistry.

"Young" Billy Young(Walker) is on the run after having killed a ruthless Mexican general. He runs into sheriff Mitchum, who "makes him an offer he can't refuse", i.e. to become his deputy. The young man is reluctant at first, but with bad guy Fred Boone on his way to town, he realizes that his help will be more than welcome.

However, if you think that the story centres on any of these events, you are wrong. It's a bit of everything and always too little of it, if you know what I mean. For example,you hear the characters talk every now and then about the bad guy Fred Boone. However, you won't get to see him until the final gunfight, which is over before you know it. Perhaps, the film is most interesting for fans of Robert Mitchum. He has a great part as the aging sheriff and obviously has a lot of fun playing it too. In fact, he must be one of the most enjoyable characters I have ever seen in an old western.(better than most John Wayne parts)

The acting is actually overall quite good. Angie Dickinson too has a nice part as a local "dancer". The story isn't too bad either, except then for the fact that it seems awfully shortened. The film as a whole lasts only a mere 89 minutes and that's just too short for the potential it has in it. So: not bad, but not better than 6/10.

A good entertainment but nothing more : in this western we are between the classics and the spaghetti ones. This provides us a good a conventional story but it's always a pleasure to see Robert Mitchum with his legendary flegma although he isn't as fit as in the forties or the fifties. And don't forget David Carradine is the son of John Carradine

Robert Mitchum plays a sheriff in a town dominated by evil bosses and their gangs. When MItchum arrests the son of the boss-man for murder, the gang is determined the sheriff won't live to punish the punk. As for his deputy (Robert Walker Jr.--who, inexplicably, gets the film named after his character), he's rather ambivalent--unsure whether to help or just get out of the way. Can they stand up against the combined forces of evil and survive (what do you think?!)? "Young Billy Young" is an enjoyable western. However, the plot is incredibly familiar--too familiar. Robert Mitchum himself (who stars in "Young Billy Young") appeared in "El Dorado" (a remake of "Rio Bravo")--which is pretty similar to such films as "High Noon" and "Last Train From Gun Hill". All these films (and many more) are like "YBY" because they, too, are stories about honest sheriffs who refuse to knuckle under to gangs who run old western towns. Because of this familiarity, the film just cannot rise above mediocrity even if it did star Mitchum.

In addition to Mitchum, the film stars two sons of famous actors--Robert Walker Jr. and David Carridine. They are competent but no more in the film. Its strengths are its acting by Mitchum as well as the nice relationship he has with Angie Dickenson (who was ALSO in Rio Bravo!). Negatives are Mitchum singing the opening song (uggh!) and the ridiculously easy way the two young guns kill off the Mexican general near the beginning of the film. The ending is also a bit abrupt.