Only Peckinpah's second film, but arguably his best one, made in his mid-thirties, and already "autumnal" in outlook: two retired lawmen (gift roles for the well-deserving Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea) trying with different degrees of desperation to hang on to their dignity in the fading frontier. It's all rather talky; and the middle section in a rowdy mining camp, with the introduction of the mangy-cur bad guys, is rather tacky. But the finale pays off in one precious moment after another: the rusty McCrea realizing too late that he has ridden into an ambush; the disgraced Scott redeeming himself in a big way, galloping full speed to the rescue with gun blazing; one of the baddies, frustrated at his inability to hit a human target, turning his firearm on some closer-to-hand chickens (failing to hit them either); the old-fashioned, stirringly nostalgic, O.K. Corral-style showdown ("My sentiments exactly"), complete with shoulder-to-shoulder march into combat; the dying hero's last panoramic look at his world before giving up the ghost. With Mariette Hartley, Ron Starr, Warren Oates, James Drury, R.G. Armstrong. (1962) — Duncan Shepherd
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