An essential western of the 1950s and an airtight seventy-seven minutes of artful tension. In their second of five films together, Budd Boetticher directs, Burt Kennedy writes, and Randolph Scott stars. They were a team who always made their films stark and simple, but with finely drawn adult characters. Out on the beautiful desert plains, Randolph Scott plays a likable loner who gets roped into a hostage situation. The bad guys are three scuzzballs lead by Richard Boone. The hostages are wealthy newlyweds Maureen O’Sullivan and John Hubbard. Hubbard is a weasel who sells out his wife to save himself, leaving her and Randolph Scott to plan their escape (Randolph Scott almost always gets mixed up with a married woman in these Boetticher films).
Great nasty bad guys here. They even kill a child without feeling a sliver of remorse. Henry Silva is a memorably cold young gun who’s always eager to ventilate someone, but Richard Boone is one of those great Burt Kennedy villains who has a disarming honorable streak.
Based on the Elmore Leonard story, The Captives. The original title of the film was either going to be that or The Tall Rider. No one remembers why, but someone eventually changed the title to The Tall T, which means nothing. None of the principle characters’ names even start with “T”.