Best movie of this year hands down!

Gripping story with well-crafted characters

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

I read the Jimmy Stewart bio recently and the Westerns he did with Anthony Mann revived his career after World War II. Stewart is able to fashion slightly different characters in each of these, in this case, a surly cynical loner who is chasing the Ryan murderous character for a $5000 bounty (lol..I wonder if there ever was a 5000$ bounty in the Old West? You could buy a whole county for that. Of course, there was a similar bounty on Jason Robard's villain in Once Upon a Time in the West, but that was just another movie). In his quest, he acquires two unsteady partners, but even after they capture Ryan, it's a long ride to Abilene to collect the reward. It becomes apparent that the Ryan character is shrewder than all 3 of his captors. (And he has a young Janet Leigh in tow-that's complicated).I read that Anthony Mann made the scenery a star of his pictures and Naked Spur features plenty of that. Just amazing. Watch for a scene where a log chugs downstream to ruin a character's day after he had safely traversed the rapids with a rope. Fantastic cinematography, even by today's standards.Typically, you can guess the outcome of a Western halfway through, but, believe me, you have no idea what will happen here. I am going to add this baby to my Jimmy Stewart collection and recommend you do the same. 9/10

A good character-driven western.While it has some decent action sequences, mostly straight out of the western playbook, The Naked Spur is a mostly a character-driven drama. It is a battle of wills between five people, all with different agendas, views and abilities. It is also a story of greed, which shapes many of the personal agendas. Feels a bit like Treasure of the Sierra Madre in that regard, though not anywhere near as great a movie.Plot is a bit basic, but that is mostly fine. It is the interplay between the five antagonists that matters most.Solid performance from James Stewart in the lead role (as you would expect). He does feel a bit miscast, as here, while the hero, he is not perfect and has a few character flaws. Hard to imagine James Stewart playing a character that was anything less than perfect.Good support from Janet Leigh, Robert Ryan and Millard Mitchell. Ralph Meeker, as the former Army officer, is a bit hammy.

If you can get past the dumb title, this is a heckuva good outdoor western, filmed in majestic southwestern Colorado. It's four untrustworthy guys and one eye-candy woman trying to make it to Abilene, where three of the guys can collect a big reward for the fourth. What's unusual is none of the guys is particularly likable, so it's hard to know who to root for. There's the cashiered army lieutenant (Meeker), the grizzled old prospector (Mitchell), the embittered rancher (Stewart), and the giggling outlaw (Ryan). Then there's Ryan's girlfriend (Leigh) who only looks half-Hollywood. The shifting alliances among the bunch as they travel makes up the plot. This is the first of the celebrated Mann westerns and it shows in most every aspect: setting, script, photography, directing, and acting. (My only reservation is with the "sitting duck" staging of the Indian attack.) Nonetheless, get a load of that roaring river, too much for even white water rafting (the Uncompahgre, I believe). Then too, the tumbling rapids sort of mirrors the gang's shifting undercurrents. Stewart's never been better as the ornery Howie, basically the same kind of part he played in all his Mann westerns, while Ryan adds color with nervous snickers and giggles, definitely a different kind of bad guy. Ordinarily, I'd figure the girl was added for marquee purposes. After all, who wants to look at ugly guys for 90- minutes. But here Leigh's worked nicely into the plot. The showdown is a really memorable one and makes me doubt I'll do any more rock climbing.All in all, it's a spectacular western, with a fine cast and a suspenseful drama. In short, not a movie to be passed up

By the 1950s the Western was evolving from the simplistic John Ford/John Wayne fables to a more in-depth approach that would culminate in the 'psychological' westerns of the sixties. Henry King kick-started both the genre and the decade with The Gunfighter which removed the Roy Rogers glamorous wardrobe and guitar and showed a much more realistic West. Ironically Anthony Mann's The Naked Spur was released the same year as George Steven's all-time Great Shane which managed to combine the best of both worlds via Alan Ladd's light-coloured 'glamorous' shirt with the harshness of life on the open range. Naked Spur is definitely in the vanguard of 'psychological' Westerns and cunningly contrives a chamber piece - only five characters - set in wide open spaces to appear claustrophobic via the close-knit tensions between the five. Initially each one is out for himself with only the weakest link, Janet Leigh, ostensibly united with Robert Ryan but inevitably the balance shifts so that what began as Stewart, Mitchell, Meeker, three single units united uneasily against Ryan and Leigh, evolves into sole survivors Stewart and Leigh forming a new alliance. Ryan, of course, excelled in this kind of role which he could do standing on his head, Mitchell and Meeker lend sterling support and if Leigh is the weakest link it is Stewart who actually gets to extend his range, leaving behind the gauche, Gary Cooper-lite bashful nice guy and exploring a much darker side of his personality. On TV recently it held up well after 57 years.