Lawman [VHS] Overview
Burt Lancaster is excellent as the title character, a pitiless, unbending marshal out to arrest seven cowhands who left a dead man in the wake of a drunken tear, in this stoic, modern take on a classic Western theme. He confronts a rancher baron, trigger-happy gunmen, and the cowardly hypocrites of a frontier town: the usual bunch of Old West types sculpted into intriguing character by a crack cast. Robert Ryan brings a sad dignity to his former gunfighter tamed into a meek town marshal, and Lee J. Cobb is introspective and thoughtful as the aging cattleman weary of his life of violence: "It took guns to take this land, guns to keep it, and guns to make it grow.... Each time we bury the cost." Robert Duvall, Albert Salmi, and a young Richard Jordan (as an idealistic cowpoke whose sense of honor gets a workout in the complex conflicts) also star.
The first American feature by British director Michael Winner (who went on to make numerous tough Charles Bronson pictures, including the first three Death Wish movies) is lean and tough, with a streak of "passing of an era" melancholia, but surprisingly old-fashioned. The hard-edged, unsentimental violence, arid, austere look of the picture, and distracting overuse of zoom shots mark it as an unmistakable product of the early 1970s, but it's not so much cynical as sorrowful in its clash of ideals, and never less than clear-eyed in the presentation of harsh frontier realities. --Sean Axmaker
Customer Reviews
This is a great film, it's as if the roles Andy and Barney Fife are passed with deadly consequences. The character played by Ryan Barney sees the big picture and is pragmatic and compromise. He wants peace and tranquility in the city, though with a view on the letter of the law does sometimes. But he is weak.
Lancaster is the strong, but without concern for peace and tranquility. E 'myopic focus on the achievement of the letter of the law, without regard for the environmentCircumstances.
That said, the film is full of moral issues, and I think that most of them are very well represented. Maddox is a good man with many flaws, like the other characters. He really thinks the imperfection of the world we live and how to make the application of "rules" in a very rigorous ever sense. Maddox is not ready for any kind of compromise, until it is too late. Still, he sees his resignation and compromise, eventually, as the aging and the humilityhis character, the sympathetic and human.
This is just a brief moment, when the final gun battle looms, and moved to take his role as executioner, Hurd also spray the base price back as he fled. This is the morally vexing aspect of the film for me. Was not absolutely necessary, but in the heat of battle, perhaps Maddox just screwed. You are left wondering.
However, I found photography to be very good. Lee J. Cobb, as Bronsondoes a good job thinking of his place difficult and expensive to power and the granting of credit to which he defeated on the road. He has no stomach for further violence to his age, but if Maddox legal guns on his companion throughout his life he feels he has no choice but to fight until the end.
The role of Adam Vernon Duvall plays the kind of theme of the film in a sub-plot in miniature. He thinks he has done nothing wrong and wants to be left alone. He is ready to shoot Maddoxremove the back of hime. He is a bad (if a little 'person), but you can sympathize with the situation and ultimately fired her pride and bad decisions coming towards him.
The heroic Maddox makes so many mistakes, such as bad in this. I do not think you mean moral relativism Justice Maddox in a less violent path requested. But killing is what they do best, and that is how it is done the job. Woe to those who do not understand thatHow it works!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment