Bland title, ain't it? It came out the year after Stagecoach, so it's not like there hadn't been many westerns yet. Nevertheless, with William Wyler at the helm, I got curious. Thankfully, it's not what I'd call a generic western. The dynamic is too unusual for that.
From what I'd vaguely heard before about "Judge" Roy Bean, he was about as controversial as Wyatt Earp. This highly fictional telling casts him pretty clearly as a villain, however well-intentioned with regard to cattlemen. One man, Cole (Gary Cooper), gets mistakenly accused of running afoul of his "law" but curries favor by pretending to know personally Bean's celebrity crush, actress Lillie Langtry, the only other historically real character. In the grand western cinematic tradition of figuring out the morally right thing to do, Cole may jeopardize his fair-weather friendship by pressing for the rights of Texan homesteaders.
I'd never pictured Walter Brennan playing a villain, but he won an Oscar for it. His Bean has about the ethical and intellectual integrity of Nero Caesar, as we see from his first scene, in which he hangs a man for accidentally shooting a cow instead of the rustler who shot first. The unofficial judge even suffers periodic neck problems from a failed lynch attempt, so he ought to feel a little empathy. At least his experience as a Confederate soldier gives him a few tactical smarts.
As western heroes go, Cole is dishonest yet pretty pacifistic. Oh, he'll get into gunfights when deputized and fistfights on matters of honor, but he spends a fair chunk of the story trying to make peace in a time of war. When possible, he disarms two sides and puts his own pistol away. Ultimately, his affection for an exceptionally stubborn female homesteader convinces him not to compromise with Bean any further. The two men's final scene together defies comparison to any other western to my knowledge.
The pace of the film is surprisingly slow. The slowness doesn't build tension like in Once upon a Time in the West; it's just...there. But I didn't mind. At both its strangest and its most conventional, it's all good.
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