Ex Marshall Steve Judd is hired by a bank to deliver a consignment of gold across dangerous western territory.He takes with him his ex partner Gil Bellows and his young sidekick Heck Roundtree who are actually planning to steal the gold.Along the way they pick up young runaway Elsa Knudson who goes along for the ride. Alfred Hitchcock was definitely the master of suspense but Sam Peckinpah was certainly one of the masters of the western genre and in this his second film he showed signs of what was to come later on in his western classic,The Wild Bunch. For the modern generation of film viewers this might seem a tad slow but it does trot along at a steady pace.It is shot in vibrant colour and portrays a long lost world where men were men and the only real law was the law of the gun. This was the last film performance of Randolph Scott one of the last of the great western heroes.The film ends with him walking into the distance and fittingly walking into cinema history. They don't make films of this class anymore and like the old west they have vanished forever. 9/10
Review of Ride the High Country
