Pass me a canteen, quick. I'm all dried out after watching this desert pressure cooker. Seems Carson's wife and her lover have left spoiled millionaire Carson alone in the vast desert to die, and with a broken leg, no less. Plus, that Mojave Desert is some kind of long, empty oven. So now the poor guy has to figure out how to survive under next to impossible conditions. Worse, the god-forsaken landscape stretches out to what looks like infinity. I sure hope actor Ryan was well paid because he literally drags his butt across half the rocky landscape. But Carson's one determined guy, and by golly he's going to get even with those two traitors even if it kills him.
Only a powerhouse actor like Ryan could make Carson's grit, in the face of impossible odds, at all plausible. The screenplay does a pretty good job of showing how he improvises, still the ordeal itself remains something of a stretch. On the other hand, Lundigan makes a rather colorless "other man", while Fleming as the faithless wife looks unusually glum. I gather from IMDb that she caught a case of pneumonia on arrival at what was then a snowy Mojave location. Apparently, it carried over to her performance, which is without her usual sheen. Nonetheless, the flaming hair really looks good in Technicolor.
The movie's a grabber right up to the climax, where the fist-fight is unfortunately overdone, apparently to accommodate the 3-d technology. All in all, the survival plot may have been done a number of times, but none better than here, thanks mainly to that great gritty actor, Robert Ryan.
Only a powerhouse actor like Ryan could make Carson's grit, in the face of impossible odds, at all plausible. The screenplay does a pretty good job of showing how he improvises, still the ordeal itself remains something of a stretch. On the other hand, Lundigan makes a rather colorless "other man", while Fleming as the faithless wife looks unusually glum. I gather from IMDb that she caught a case of pneumonia on arrival at what was then a snowy Mojave location. Apparently, it carried over to her performance, which is without her usual sheen. Nonetheless, the flaming hair really looks good in Technicolor.
The movie's a grabber right up to the climax, where the fist-fight is unfortunately overdone, apparently to accommodate the 3-d technology. All in all, the survival plot may have been done a number of times, but none better than here, thanks mainly to that great gritty actor, Robert Ryan.