I'm not sure the title makes much sense. "The Bravados." I guess you can have a couple of people called the bravados in the same way that you can have desperadoes, but while people can be collectively desperate, few collectivities would exhibit "bravado," which means "boldness intended to impress or intimidate." Certainly nobody in this movies does. I take it that someone was assigned the task of coming up with a properly Western-sounding title and said, "Well, what the hell. It's better than 'The Guns of Darkness'." In the quiet little Western town of Rio Arriba or whatever it is, four men are to be hanged in the morning for felony murder -- the rapacious Steven Boyd, the bullock-like Albert Salmi, the nervous and ratty Lee Van Cleef, and the canny Indian, Henry Silva. Into the town rides the mysterious figure of Gregory Peck, looking grim and determined, waiting for the hanging.
But it never happens! The four felons escape, taking a pretty young woman hostage. The posse takes off after them, except for Peck, the most resolved of the hunters, who -- knowing that they will hold the posse off at the pass until daylight -- goes to sleep in his hotel room, ready for a fresh start with a rested horse in the morning.
That's the first hint of John Ford's "The Searchers," which appeared two years earlier. Both are revenge Westerns in which the protagonist will simply not be put off but keeps coming, filled with hatred, only to find at the end that his rage has misled him.
"The Searchers" is a superior film, more subtle in many ways, more fully fleshed out with character and humor, but "The Bravados" is a rattling good tale too. You will never be bored.
The excitement is due chiefly to some of the performances and to the direction and the plot takes some of the sheen from Peck's usually unimpeachable rectitude. He catches up with the four men, one by one. The first is Van Cleef. When Peck disarms him and has him on his knees, he shows Van Cleef a photo of his wife, whom he claims Van Cleef and the rest raped and killed at his ranch. Van Cleef, in one of his best scenes, confesses to past crimes but insists he's never seen Peck's wife. He begs for his life. In return, Peck kicks him in the face once or twice and shoots him in the back of the head. We don't know what Peck does to the next miscreant, Salmi, but it was probably pretty savage. The posse find Salmi hanging by his feet from a tree. The third man, Boyd, is shot in the chest before he has a chance to draw his pistol. No doubt Boyd deserved it. He has a "weakness" for women. When left alone with the sexy hostage, he turns utterly slimy, feeling the hem of her long dress and petticoats and beginning his planned assault by asking, "Is that silk?" The Indian's case is a little more complicated and it requires Peck to register first disbelief, then guilt. He handles it okay. It's well within his range as an actor.
Henry King directed it and did a good job too. The movie lacks a sense of place though. Lots of Mexicans around -- this is only a two- or three-day ride from the border -- but otherwise the settings are generic and functional. Rio Arriba is a typical dusty town with a hotel, an adjoining saloon, a jail house, a mercantile store, and a great big church. That's it for the community. Oh, Joan Collins is around mainly to provide Peck with a substitute for his ravaged wife, and when she goes to church she's given one of those tall black mantillas that come from Spain. Her performance is less than convincing. The script and performances, however, nicely individualize the four escapees.
The locations -- around Jalisco and in Michoacan, where my barber and guru Luis comes from -- are pretty without being distinctive: rolling hills of pine forest with jagged sawtooth mountains on the horizon. Some clichés are avoided. Nobody's life depends on a fast draw, and when we first see Peck's little daughter she looks like an unkempt street urchin. Some clichés are eagerly welcomed. Peck removes his hat after riding a hundred miles and his 1950s haircut looks freshly done and moussed by the studio barber. He is clean shaven -- and I mean void of any hint of stubble.
I swear that, at times, some of the incidents are so nearly original that I began to wonder if maybe Henry King hadn't caught them by mistake or maybe the editor had chosen the wrong take. When Peck confronts Boyd in the Mexican cantina, for instance, we don't expect Peck to interrupt the conversation by suddenly drawing his pistol and firing it -- and neither, it appears, does Boyd the actor. He looks surprised, as if a mistake had been made. A less imaginative director would have handled it much differently.
But it never happens! The four felons escape, taking a pretty young woman hostage. The posse takes off after them, except for Peck, the most resolved of the hunters, who -- knowing that they will hold the posse off at the pass until daylight -- goes to sleep in his hotel room, ready for a fresh start with a rested horse in the morning.
That's the first hint of John Ford's "The Searchers," which appeared two years earlier. Both are revenge Westerns in which the protagonist will simply not be put off but keeps coming, filled with hatred, only to find at the end that his rage has misled him.
"The Searchers" is a superior film, more subtle in many ways, more fully fleshed out with character and humor, but "The Bravados" is a rattling good tale too. You will never be bored.
The excitement is due chiefly to some of the performances and to the direction and the plot takes some of the sheen from Peck's usually unimpeachable rectitude. He catches up with the four men, one by one. The first is Van Cleef. When Peck disarms him and has him on his knees, he shows Van Cleef a photo of his wife, whom he claims Van Cleef and the rest raped and killed at his ranch. Van Cleef, in one of his best scenes, confesses to past crimes but insists he's never seen Peck's wife. He begs for his life. In return, Peck kicks him in the face once or twice and shoots him in the back of the head. We don't know what Peck does to the next miscreant, Salmi, but it was probably pretty savage. The posse find Salmi hanging by his feet from a tree. The third man, Boyd, is shot in the chest before he has a chance to draw his pistol. No doubt Boyd deserved it. He has a "weakness" for women. When left alone with the sexy hostage, he turns utterly slimy, feeling the hem of her long dress and petticoats and beginning his planned assault by asking, "Is that silk?" The Indian's case is a little more complicated and it requires Peck to register first disbelief, then guilt. He handles it okay. It's well within his range as an actor.
Henry King directed it and did a good job too. The movie lacks a sense of place though. Lots of Mexicans around -- this is only a two- or three-day ride from the border -- but otherwise the settings are generic and functional. Rio Arriba is a typical dusty town with a hotel, an adjoining saloon, a jail house, a mercantile store, and a great big church. That's it for the community. Oh, Joan Collins is around mainly to provide Peck with a substitute for his ravaged wife, and when she goes to church she's given one of those tall black mantillas that come from Spain. Her performance is less than convincing. The script and performances, however, nicely individualize the four escapees.
The locations -- around Jalisco and in Michoacan, where my barber and guru Luis comes from -- are pretty without being distinctive: rolling hills of pine forest with jagged sawtooth mountains on the horizon. Some clichés are avoided. Nobody's life depends on a fast draw, and when we first see Peck's little daughter she looks like an unkempt street urchin. Some clichés are eagerly welcomed. Peck removes his hat after riding a hundred miles and his 1950s haircut looks freshly done and moussed by the studio barber. He is clean shaven -- and I mean void of any hint of stubble.
I swear that, at times, some of the incidents are so nearly original that I began to wonder if maybe Henry King hadn't caught them by mistake or maybe the editor had chosen the wrong take. When Peck confronts Boyd in the Mexican cantina, for instance, we don't expect Peck to interrupt the conversation by suddenly drawing his pistol and firing it -- and neither, it appears, does Boyd the actor. He looks surprised, as if a mistake had been made. A less imaginative director would have handled it much differently.