Robert Taylor in his anti-hero mode - he's a dangerous gunfighter aligned with a coarse, ruthless Mexican bandit (Anthony Quinn hamming it up in fine style). It's set in New Mexico, where the Mexicans are getting annoyed at the whites moving into their territory after the Civil War - as led by settler Howard Keel and his wife. So the Mexicans are the baddies, really - rather like the cattlemen in Shane, standing in the way of progress, which is a bit dodgy. They are loud, rumbustious thieves partial to using the gun. The Anglos are victims and on the side of law and order - there's none of the complexity of, say, Broken Arrow.
Taylor kind of gets the hots for Ava Gardner but the love triangle here is really between Keel, Taylor and Quinn, with Quinn and Keel battling over Taylor. Quinn goes into a big sook when he thinks Taylor has changed sides - he's like a lover scorned. Taylor talks about how he and Quinn used to share a bed growing up. Both men end up killing each other. Gardner does kiss Taylor - but then he slaps her. Because you know, that's not on. The Western has to be the most homoerotic genre in the history of American cinema.
Taylor is quite effective wearing a bit of stubble and glowering in black, even if he doesn't really look like someone who's lived among Mexicans his whole life. Quinn channels the ghost of Wallace Beery and has a good old time, and Keel is solid in a role that isn't that big (it would have been a better film if there had been more shades to his character - or if they had combined the characters of Gardner and Keel into one). Ava Gardner is wasted. Jack Elam is fun. There is a wise Mexican Catholic priest who hangs around being the conscience for everyone, who gets on the nerves and smacks of the influence of John Farrow.
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