1958 - THE LAW AND JAKE WADE, disappointing but okay western

Considering the talent in front and behind the camera, this should have been a much better western.  Reformed bad guy turned sheriff Robert Taylor rides into another town to free his bank robber buddy Richard Widmark playing another psycho killer.    Taylor has seemed to forget the Widmark is a real bad guy,  Widmark takes Taylor prisoner along with Taylor's girlfriend.  The girlfriend seems a rather improbable plot device to get a woman into what is essentially an all male story.  They all set out for an abandoned ghost town to get the loot from the last robbery they pulled together.  It all ends predictably of course.

What this story has going for it is on location shooting in the Alabama Hills near Lone Pine, California This is a favorite place of the director John Sturges.  Sturges has also staged some decent gunfights and encounters with some Native Americans in a ghost town.  Sturges was at his peak as one of the best action directors in Hollywood.

The chief culprit in this film is the writer William Bowers whose best films were spoofs of the western genre in films like Support Your Local Sheriff and The Sheepman, Bowers seems a little out of his element scripting a film that is more a western action drama than a comedy.  Interesting enough Bowers played a Senator in The Godfather Part II.

 

John Sturges is a couple of years away from his masterpieces, The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven, but his talent is very evident even in a rather tired western story like this one.  The film does have nice photography courtesy of old pro Robert Surtees.

The running time is a quick 88 minutes