Horizons West

Nit up to par, say, The Tall T, Ride lonesome, The Cimarron Kid, Westbound, The Man from the Alamo, Comanche Station, or even Red Ball Express, but still above Decision at Sundown, Seminole, and Bronco Buster.

Nit up to par, say, The Tall T, Ride lonesome, The Cimarron Kid, Westbound, The Man from the Alamo, Comanche Station, or even Red Ball Express, but still above Decision at Sundown, Seminole, and Bronco Buster.

Tomorrow is a big day ... it all happened so fast ... how many times have you heard these words ... we are making ends meet ... i want something better ... sometimes i watch this crap and think, only idiots can be screen writers ..post civil war in texas was bleak because the carpet baggers moved in and stole everything in sight ... no other state was affected as bad as texas when johnny came marching home again ... blech

Another typical Hudson vehicle carried by stars and future stars. Hudson uses(tried) his looks to star in a western. Post civil war as usual he plays a past southern gentleman who turns to crime to try and get back at the north for lost life. As usual the movie survives on true acting talents from Robert Ryan, Dennis Weaver and James Atnrds. Also veterans Julie Adams and Francis Bevier. If you can get past Hudson's ridged, terrible acting, it's a great story.

the best thing about this western is its title. the next best thing is its glorious technicolor imagery. the 'look' of this film makes it a classic western - fully lit western skies, iconographic star close ups of confederate soldiers and texas belles - richly textured in luscious technicolor. the title - horizons west - and the beauty of the images sum up the idea of manifold destiny and western expansion. curiously the narrative itself contradicts the look as elder brother robert ryan abandons the simple homestead lifestyle for the corruptly sophisticated attractions of town life. as younger brother (rock hudson)is pitted against older brother (ryan), there are suggestions of biblical undertones. hudson, now a deputy marshal, eventually hunts down ryan for murder thereby restoring the idea of honesty and integrity as part of western expansion.

One of a number of interesting psychological westerns from the fifties though this isn't in the same class as the later Budd Boetticher/Randolph Scott westerns, (it's let down by a poor script and poor acting). Robert Ryan and Rock Hudson play brothers returning from the Civil War to the vanquished Confederate side. Ryan goes to the bad while the mealy-mouthed Hudson stays on the side of law and order and that's basically it. But Boetticher sets up a number of interesting scenarios that make the Ryan character far from a cut-and-dried villain, (late in the film there is even a little speech as to what turned him the way he is), and the familial relationships are nicely drawn.