The Bravados Sale
Jim Douglas (Gregory Peck) rides into town the night before the hanging of four outlaws. He's been on their trail, believing they raped and killed his wife. But hours before the execution, the four escape, taking a beautiful young woman hostage. Now it
Description
During his Twentieth Century Fox contract years, Gregory Peck looked to veteran director Henry King as something of a father figure and gave two of his best performances--in Twelve O'Clock High (1949) and The Gunfighter (1950)--for him. The Bravados (1958) isn't in that league, but it's a surprisingly tough film from the flabby CinemaScope years when the studio, director, and star all seemed to be floundering.
Peck plays Jim Douglass, a dark, haunted man who rides into a Southwest border town on the eve of a hanging. The bad men set for the drop (Stephen Boyd, Albert Salmi, Lee Van Cleef, Henry Silva) are the same ones he's been pursuing for the rape and murder of his wife. Douglass isn't happy about leaving it to the law to carry out his vengeance--and so there's a certain bleak satisfaction when the quartet busts out of jail, and he becomes the best hope for hunting them down.
Perversity wasn't King's long suit, so Philip Yordan's screenplay about a hero turning more sinister than the outlaws he's chasing never acquires the demonic power or ironic flair that an Anthony Mann, Fritz Lang, or Robert Aldrich might have lent it. Yet the very foursquareness of King's style and approach--and Peck's earnest efforts to fight through his accustomed stolidity to hit the necessary notes of desperation and finally shame--make for a fascination all their own. Joan Collins hovers handsomely on the periphery as an old friend ready to redeem Douglass, and Joe (Curly Joe-to-be) De Rita makes an uncredited appearance as the hangman. --Richard T. Jameson
The Bravados Customer Review
This film deals pretty openly with subjects that were still sort of taboo in 1958 -- rape and revenge killings.
Briefly, the plot revolves around Peck's Jim Douglass role. He's a rancher who has been dogedly hunting down four very bad men who could've raped and killed his wife. He finds them in jail 100 miles away from his ranch ... Not to give too much away, but the movie turns into a 90 minute chase and morality play. Great acting from Peck, Stephen Boyd, Henry Silva, Lee Van Cleef and Albert Salmi (who was the "bad guy" in more 60s and 70s tv shows than are probably listed online).
What strikes me most of all, is that from looking at this film, you can see it clearly had an influence on Sergio Leone almost a decade later when he made his Western triology starring Clint Eastwood.
There's the lone gunman against the world theme, along with revenge killing (not really done all that much in westerns before) and almost directly taken from The Bravados is the watch-with-a-picture. Peck holds out a watch with a picture of his dead wife to, Lee Van Cleef (and the rest of the bad guys) as a sort of guilt weapon. In 1965's "For a Few Dollars More" Van Cleef plays very much the same type of role as Colonel Mortimer having chased a man who performed almost the same act on his family.
This film gets an A for production and script. It's a little hokey at the end with Peck talking to a priest, but at least the acting and scenery are interesting.
It's a good film. Well worth a Saturday afternoon viewing.
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