the audience applauded

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

When the experienced bounty-hunter and former sheriff Morg Hickman (Henry Fonda) arrives in a town to claim his bounty for killing a wanted outlaw, he meets the rookie temporary sheriff Ben Owens (Anthony Perkins). Hickman befriends the boy Kip (Michel Ray) and is lodged by his widow mother Nona Mayfield (Betsy Palmer) at home. Meanwhile Ben asks Hickman to teach him to be a sheriff since he wants to be assigned by the residents to the position. Ben faces problem with the scum troublemaker Bart Bogardus (Neville Brand) and when a prominent dweller is murdered by two criminals, Bogardus organizes a posse to hunt them down. But Ben has decided to capture the killers alive and give a fair trial to them. "The Tin Star" is a great western directed by Antony Mann, with the 52 year-old Henry Fonda in excellent shape and Anthony Perkins in one of his first features. The bitter Hickman has a sad past that has certainly affected his behavior and Anthony Perkins is perfect in the role of the insecure Ben Owens. The happy end is a counterpoint to "Shane" that has similar situation of a stranger involved with a boy and a widow. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "O Homem dos Olhos Frios" ("The Man of the Cold Eyes")

Not much new here. Morgan Hickman (Fonda) is an ex-sheriff bounty hunter who drifts into town, initially against his will, starts giving law-and-order pointers (and some covering fire) to earnest new sheriff Ben Owens. The quick-drawing stranger with a tragic backstory had been done before, as has the town failing to support the sheriff when things get tough story. Add an annoying little kid and a lovable codger with a target on his back, and you get a string of Hollywood tropes strung together into an average Western. The saving grace is, of course, Fonda, who is always great. Perkins is fine as the neophyte lawman, but the character itself is so trite that I quickly lost interest in him. The main 'black-hat' is the standard sneering tough-guy townie and there are a couple of throw-away stage robbers to herd the plot along (one being everyone's favourite squinting baddie, Lee Van Cleef). Bernstein's score is good and foreshadows his outstanding work in "The Magnificent Seven". "The Tin Star" is better than most 50's Westerns (faint praise) but not in the same league as pre-dating films such as "Shane" (1953), "The Gunfighter" (1950), "The Searchers" (1956), or "High Noon (1952)". Watchable but not memorable.

A solid entertaining movie different from earlier Mann films like Winchester 73,Bend of the River, Far Country The Naked Spur, Man from Laramie etc. Morg Hickman(Fonda) is never in any serious on screen danger,or in great physical pain here, so deduct one star for that. Jimmy Stewart would never have gotten off this easy. Early Tony Perkins role as a rookie sheriff who's got everything to learn but has the right teacher in Hickman. This film predates Face of a Fugitive, a 1959 film with Fred McMurray & Lin McCarthy has similar theme of older experienced outlaw teaching a novice sheriff. Gold star here to TS. Some other random thoughts. John McIntire(Winchester 73 and The Far Country) in a rare role as a noble country doctor who makes housecalls. Betsy Palmer- What's Her Line? She's a beautiful widow with an overactive half breed son. A young Robert Blake (Treasure of Sierra Madre) would have been less annoying as her son but I guess he was too big for the part. Lee Van Cleef sans moustache appears as a doctor's worst nightmare patient.I liked Fonda's relaxed demeanor and the gravitas he brings to the tale. Just needed him to be in real danger at some point to be a real Mann flick.

It doesn't matter what the genre is, when the writing is great, then the film will usually be great also. This Oscar-nominated film had a superb script that made everything else look fantastic.Henry Fonda is an ex-sheriff turned bounty hunter that appears in town to collect his reward. He has to wait until it comes, so he ends up befriending the town outcast - Betsy Palmer (before she became Jason's mom), a woman with a half-breed child, and helping the new Sheriff - Anthony Perkins, before he went Psycho and killed his mom.Fonda gave a measured and stirring performance in a role that was supposed to go to Jimmy Stewart. In the process of helping others, he was able to find himself and turn his life around.In a humorous scene old Doc McCord (John McIntire) had just delivered the 12th child to a farmer that lived in the sticks. It was 2:30 am and he leaned back to sleep in his carriage and told his horse to head home saying, "You probably know the way better than I do." Now, that is the kind of cruise control we don't have on our modern vehicles! A great film that shows how important writers are to the movies.