Synopsis
At last the search was over...
A man and his partner arrive at a small Western town to kill its most powerful man because the former blames him for his wife's death.
1957 Directed by Budd Boetticher
A man and his partner arrive at a small Western town to kill its most powerful man because the former blames him for his wife's death.
Randolph Scott John Carroll Karen Steele Valerie French Noah Beery Jr. John Archer Andrew Duggan James Westerfield John Litel Ray Teal Vaughn Taylor Richard Deacon H.M. Wynant Gordon Carveth Bill Clark Abel Fernandez Duke Fishman Herman Hack Al Haskell Reed Howes Ethan Laidlaw Pierce Lyden Philo McCullough Frank Mills Frank O'Connor Bob Reeves Loretta Russell Bob Steele
Entardecer Sangrento, Décision à Sundown, Decisione al tramonto, Cita en Sundown, Fahrkarte ins Jenseits, Le Vengeur agit au crépuscule, 日落镇的决断, Sundown: Mesto pomsty, Decizia din Sundown, Jeden dzień w Sundown, 선다운의 결전, Decisió a Sundown, Desperat hämnare
"Looks like you are doing your job real good, don't spoil it with your philosophizing"
Far more rhetorical than some of other Boetticher/Scott westerns, almost a reverse High Noon, but Boetticher filmmaking is so plain and direct that barely matters. More blows with words than guns. Very good character acting throughout and one of Scott's better turns as well.
Wow! Blown away by how minimalist and powerful this one was. Almost every bit as good as Liberty Valence without being as overtly self-reflexive (and made a good five years prior). It takes iconic Western motifs such as the badass gunfighter with a score to settle and the town with a corrupt ruling class, and turns them on their head. There's a doctor character who serves as kind of a Greek chorus to handhold the audience through the morality play that enfolds. Maybe everything he says is on the nose, but it's just so damn well written that the bluntness of the delivery is forgivable. Considering when this was made, the cynical view of history, the haunt of past mistakes,…
Doc, if you’d been tending bar as long as I have, you wouldn’t expect so much out of the human race.
A fear of facing up to the truth, even if that truth means idly standing by as evil does it’s thing, for acknowledgement would be blind-faced admission of guilt. As soaked in the chaser of willed decrepitude. A fear that takes over a whole town, by name of Sundown. Fear that poisons the waterhole with greed and inhumanity. And bleeds it dry of any genuine semblance of honest to God character.
A man walks into said town, a rifle in his pocket and a score to settle in the other. This town's reaction to his entrance says all. Some…
Decision at Sundown is Randolph Scott's film. He gives such an unusual performance. At first you think he is a white-hat, riding into town to free it from corruption, a man set against a town. However, the film twists and turns in 77 minutes, as you understand quite how unlikeable Randolph Scott's Bart Allison is.
Scott plays him brilliantly, like a raw nerve, of hurt and anger. His voice occasionally cracks and he even raises it; he rarely breaks out that great Randolph Scott smile. He is a real bastard in this film. In the manner of Ethan Edwards. He is alone. He ends alone. He doesn't win. The town may finally stand up to be counted, but Scott embodies…
The first of these Budd Boetticher/Randolph Scott Westerners that hasn't really worked for me. (Apparently, Boetticher himself cited this as one of the only two mediocre films he made as part of the Ranown cycle). The script seems to be aiming for shades of ambiguity, which is admirable for a Western in 1957, but as the credits rolled what I experienced was closer to ambivalence: the film wants us to take the Tate Kimbrough character as though he's some sort of feudal lord in the town of Sundown, ruling with an iron fist, but as the movie opens...he's serving the entire town free drinks on his wedding day, and the townspeople don't seem lorded over, just a bit venal and…
October the 11th 2021 was the first time I encountered Budd Boetticher's Ranown Cycle, and it was only a month before that I had my first taste of its star Randolph Scott. Fast forward 2 years, and Randolph Scott has grown to become my favourite ever actor, with 52 of his films watched, and 58 titles added to my Blu Ray and Dvd collection. I knew fairly early on what to expect from Randolph Scott, he had an easy-going charm courtesy of that Southern upbringing, and it didn't come as a surprise during my Western odyssey how many times he played either a Confederate officer, or a Confederate veteran in Westerns. In a 15 year period between 1940-1955 he made…
"I'll tell ya one thing. None of us will ever forget the day Bart Allison spent in Sundown"
Bart Allison arrives into the town of Sundown at the conclusion of his three year manhunt of Tate Kimbrough. Bart believes that Tate killed his wife so it's ironic that the day he finds him just so happens to be Tate's wedding day. Tate is a powerful man in town, and he has the local sheriff and his goons under his employ. After starting a scene and barricading in a barn, it's up to not only Bart Allison but the townsfolk as well, to stop Tate Kimbrough and return normalcy to their home.
I'm not exactly sure where I got the idea…
If you asked me to outline the standard western plot, it would go something like this. A rugged frontiersman, his face seemingly hewn from living rock, rides into a troubled town and, with his quick draw and sheer manliness, rids it of its troubles, shoots some bad guys and gets the girl before riding off into the sunset. Decision at Sundown doesn’t really break this classic structure, but what once seemed dashing and heroic now feels anything but.
For starters, Bart Allison isn’t particularly interested in liberating Sundown from the tyranny of Tate Kimbrough, the man he blames for his wife’s suicide; it is merely a happy consequence of his quest for revenge. But the more we learn of the…
super lean western programmer that exists somewhere between a siege film and an understated revenge narrative, all of which has the novelty of taking place in a matter of hours amidst a wedding — not quite as cynical as other Boetticher films but if anyone was going to take what should be the happiest of days and make it anything but, Budd is your guy
If I was ranking just the second half of this, I think I might put it behind only 7 Men from Now in the Ranown Cycle (including only the ones that I’ve seen so far). That half is an excellent take on the age-old western story of a beaten down town rising up against its oppressor, and the performances of John Carroll as Tate Kimbrough (the oppressor) and John Archer as Doc Storrow, the only man in town who has retained his self-respect, are fantastic. Both men are presented as far more than black and white, and even Kimbrough is allowed to maintain his humanity, largely thanks to the vulnerability of Carroll’s performance. As a whole, though it starts very,…
Decision at Sundown has an intriguing premise and the story goes into some interesting and unexpected directions. Randolph Scott is very good here again but the supporting cast also gets plenty of time to shine. I especially liked John Carroll who gives a very nuanced performance as the antagonist. This was my second from the Ranown Westerns and I like what I’m seeing here. These are short and sweet, character driven movies, well-cast, acted and directed. I’m ready for more.
Not the best collaboration between Budd Boetticher and Randolph Scott, but it was the most interesting. This was another DVR recording made earlier in the month I finally got around to. I rate the others I've seen so far higher, although that is no slight against this as it was still pretty good and I'll give it props for presenting a different sort of story (based on a novel) than expected. It is different from even the other psychological Westerns I've experienced, without being a bad sort of different.
Things are more complex than they first seem when I mention that the story is of Scott's character seeking revenge against the guy who he blames for his wife's death. The…