Wonderfully offbeat film!

This is How Movies Should Be Made

Strictly average movie

Please don't spend money on this.

Colorado Territory is directed by Raoul Walsh and adapted to screenplay by Edmund H. North and John Twist from the novel "High Sierra" written by W.R. Burnett. It stars Joel McCrea, Virginia Mayo, Dorothy Malone and Henry Hull. Music is by David Buttolph and cinematography by Sidney Hickox.Raoul Walsh remakes his own High Sierra from 1941 but supplants it into a western setting - with tremendous results. McCrea plays outlaw Wes McQueen who springs from prison and vows to go straight, but with a price on his head he is coerced into one last railroad robbery. If he can escape the law, he can make a go of it as a new man, with a new man, and comforted by a new found love of a good woman, Colorado Carson (Mayo). Can he escape the law and those who would sell him for money?A remake of a classic film noir, Colorado Territory is itself classic film noir. Whilst not reaching the dizzying star heights of Bogart's 41 version, this is a film of great strengths. Thematically it's noir gold dust, the great Walsh not pandering to anyone and ensuring the dark edges of Burnett's novel play out on screen, including the shattering finale. The photography is grade "A", both in chiaroscuro textures and sumptuous location framings. Cast can't be faulted either, McCrea a genuine horseman is firmly at home in a Western setting, Mayo and Malone positively light and sex up the screen, while classy performer Hull lends weighty support.High end Western staples are adhered to, with robbery actions, fights, stunts, villainous betrayals and back stabbers, these marry up to the noirish cement of a man unable to escape his fate, his past weighing heavy on his shoulders, there's a doom laden feel permeating the story.Rarely mentioned when talk turns to film noir Westerns, but it should be as it's one of the best. 9/10

Scathing Dialog that evokes Film-Noir (as does the Story), solid Performances by the entire Cast, Excellent and slightly askew Locations and Settings, Gunplay and Violence that doesn't Pull Punches, a Hard-Boiled tone with an Ending that is Downbeat and foreshadows the Cynical Mann, Boetticher Fifties Standouts in the Genre.Yes, the Story is a Remake of High Sierra (1941) also done by Director Raoul Walsh, but this is every bit as Powerful in its Western Setting, and in some respects even more so. Virginia Mayo melts the Screen with Her Beauty and stands by Her Man with as much Heart and Dedication that befits the Noir Anti-Heroine, and thankfully there is no Dog this time.The Script is loaded with many Quotables. Speaking of a Cemetery, the always intense but likable Joel McCrea reminisces..."It was the prettiest bone orchard you ever seen, looked over by stone Angels." There are many others. A slightly overlooked Film that is as Good as the Genre gets and is one of those that should attract Movie Buffs not usually enamored by Westerns.

W.R. Burnett's book "High Sierra", filmed in 1941 with Humphrey Bogart as a jewel thief, gets a rousing (and uncredited) western reworking here, with the main character's vocation changed to train robber. In 1871 Missouri, a criminal set for execution breaks out of prison and holes up in the valley with two of his cronies, where they plot another railroad heist. Director Raoul Walsh (who also helmed "High Sierra" for Warner Bros.) gets superlative usage out of the dusty, craggy locations, with cinematographer Sid Hickox capturing the mountain terrain and cloudy skies in gorgeously expressive black-and-white. Joel McCrea is surprisingly comfortable playing the semi-bad guy (though definitely one with a heart of mush...and a yen for marriage!), however some of the supporting characters are a bit of a stretch. Virgina Mayo (she of the glassy-eyed stare) does what she can in the insane role of an ex-dance hall girl, Dorothy Malone is completely lost in the underwritten part of a well digger's daughter who wants a better life, and John Archer and James Mitchell are two cardboard villains. The picture gets by on the strength of its considerable technical merits and by McCrea's performance; with his easy gait and benign personality, McCrea is likable even when he's shooting down the law (he's shrewd and sturdy, a good man to have around). However, the writing is overheated, and the nutty finale provokes unintended laughs. Story filmed yet again by recycle-happy Warner Bros. in 1955, entitled "I Died a Thousand Times". **1/2 from ****

The commenters who called this "Western noir" are on the money. Just about everyone in this movie is a ratlike scheming double- or triple-crosser. Bad guys suffer fates not noticeably worse than the handful of schmo's who are honest (mostly in the relative, honor-among-thieves sense). It's all bleak for the ones who don't get out alive and also for the ones who do. The one aspect of this movie that may have lost its punch for 21st century viewers is the script's banal dialogue for the two key women characters. Virginia Mayo in particular is better than her lines and her costume, which is fashioned entirely from clichés about wanton women who aren't 100 percent Anglo. But the story arc treats the women just differently enough from the "classic" Western that it held my interest. The cast, top to bottom, is excellent. Joel McCrea does that thing he does so well *especially* well here. I'd like to see Peter Sarsgaard reprise a McCrea role some day, in either a Western or a Sturges classic.