Popular reviews

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  Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★★½

  "It is a pure shame, ain't it? How a man will push himself for money".
  The Boetticher/Scott/Brown series closes itself reduced to essentials. A track western that is just some plain people horse-riding while contemplating what's behind and yearn for an unclear ahead. Kennedy's script is precise and Boetticher's feel for geography has rarely been better. Those rocks are the most distinguish thing about it, a large film tomb. Stagecoach is dutifully evoked, but in this series pragmatical reality there's not much of society to comment on, just to endure.

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  Review by 📀 Cammmalot 📀 ★★★★ 10

  ”I’ve come too far to turn back now.”

  Yet another solid western from Budd Boetticher that stars Randolph Scott as the stand up man and an excellent Claude Akins as the scheming villain.

  Such a simple story, well delivered with great direction, great pace and great acting. A true B-movie beauty.

  ”Remember me telling you I had a plan?”
  “Yeah.”
  “Well, I still got it.”

  
  Cinematic Time Capsule - 1960 Ranked

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  Review by Ben Peterson ★★★★

  Shot in gloooooorious CinemaScope with Eastman Color, the vistas are striking and beautiful, and very present. All the better when the quality action hits, and around the hour mark there's a scene with just a couple of moving parts but the stunt work here is terrific and brings about the "OHHHs" after a stuntman does a full speed jump off of a fall horse. It's really something (that probably left some bruises), and the crazy thing looking at it now was that it was just another day making Westerns in 1960. Burt Kennedy (who I'm seeing was a integral part of these Ranowns) with the writing really nails this ending right up to the closing credits.

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  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★★ 4

  "Sure hope I amount to something."

  Comanche Station has some of the most humanized villains not only in Boetticher's (extensively human) filmography, but in most of the western canon. Everybody just want to amount to something; the only difference between the "good guys" and the "bad guys" is circumstance. The villains' motivations are all explained ("He only knew the wild side.") but not justified ("Man can cross over whenever he likes."). At the same time, the hero is justified but not glorified, and Comanche Station ends with easily the most emotionally ambiguous ending in the seven westerns I've seen from Boetticher so far.

  "You want to go to work, do you?"
  "Work?"
  "Making an honest living?"
  "Oh, no, I don't…

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  Review by Gregor Kreyca ★★★★ 2

  Every entry of the Ranown Westerns has impressed me in so far as in how flashed out the characters are despite their short runtime. Comanche Station is no exception in that regard. Even the side characters really become three dimensional beings and it is fascinating and entertaining to watch them interact with each other. A lot of the tension comes from the strong writing and the good performances. It shows that even back in the 50/60’s a big budget isn’t always needed when you have a solid script, competent actors and a director who really has a compelling story to tell. The high level of craftsmanship from everyone involved is once again very evident in Comanche Station.

  I have now…

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  Review by HKFanatic ★★★★

  It's perhaps fitting that the final film in director Budd Boetticher and star Randolph Scott's Ranown Cycle would be a remix of familiar story elements from their previous efforts—the plotting here is more or less a reworking of the setups from "7 Men from Now" and "Ride Lonesome." And Claude Akins plays another one of writer Burt Kennedy's complicated, not entirely unlikable villains, in the vein of Richard Boone in "The Tall T" or Lee Marvin in "7 Men from Now." Granted, the increased focus on the Comanche tribe adds a unique element to this one: for one thing, there's hardly any English dialogue spoken during the first eight minutes.

  Almost a bit of a bummer to be finished with…

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  Review by comrade_yui ★★★★★ 1

  eastwood borrows a lot from boetticher's harsh, atonal style of making westerns, something that's perhaps most obviously apparent in this, with all the two-figure cinemascope compositions and flashes of offbeat humor. the difference is the era in which they worked: eastwood started directing in an era in which it was most important for a western to justify its existence by having a 'theme' that would turn it from a genre exercise into a formal statement on the history of film as a whole, especially film violence; boetticher, being free of such revisionist preoccupations, is allowed to break the western down into its essential parts and take a magnifying glass to examine how and why we watch supposedly 'simple' entertainment. in…

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  Review by Andy Summers 🤠 ★★★★½ 7

  There was a simplicity to the Boetticher/Scott Westerns that made them so accessible to even just a passing viewer. I've had friends who know my love for Westerns who've mentioned that when The Tall T or Ride Lonesome had come on television, usually on Film 4 during the afternoon, or on TCM, that they'd end up sitting down and watching them, even when they didn't like Westerns. The scripts and plots were always straightforward, offered morality tales, and Boetticher's visual eye for beauty in the arid landscapes of the California Sierras, gave his films a vibrancy few could match. With Randolph Scott in his fifties, he had the look and elegance of a man who'd experienced life, endured hardships, and…

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  Review by RetroHound ★★★★½ 4

  Might just be the best of the Randolph Scott/Budd Boetticher films I've seen. Scott travels into Comanche territory to trade for a white woman. He gets her part way back and they run into a fellow he helped get court-martialed out of the Army (Claude Akins). This guy has two traveling companions and they are trouble. It seems there is a $5000 reward for bringing the woman in, and Akins intends to collect, even if it means killing both Scott and the woman. Similar in many ways to Ride Lonesome, which I also gave a high rating. The camera work in this film is just spectacular. Akins does a great job, as does Scott.

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  Review by comrade_yui ★★★★ 2

  worth watching for the cinemascope mastery alone. so many contemporary american films today have absolutely no fucking clue how to compose a 'scope frame, they treat it like they're blocking actors and landscapes for television, blotting out layers and not taking advantage of the sweeping curvature possible, but this sure as hell makes the most of it! all these budd boetticher/randolph scott westerns are basically the same shit over and over again, but they're damn good because of the versatile craft that goes into them. bring back the 73 minute movie!

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  Review by Andy Summers 🤠 ★★★★ 6

  Plans don't always come to fruition, you see I'd planned a Randolph Scott marathon for Friday the 31st of December where I'd finally get around to a triple bill of the Ranown Cycle, and push Randolph Scott to the top of my most watched actors list for 2021. To be fair though, John Wayne at number one with 21 was a decent tally to strive for, but considering I only saw my first Scott film at the end of September, 18 films from the big guy was pretty good. I'd bought the Budd Boetticher Indicator Blu Rays in mid-October, after watching Boetticher's 7 Men From Now, which blew me away, and with Decision at Sundown, Ride Lonesome, Comanche Station, The…

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  Review by covkate ★★★★

  This is the third film from the Ranown cycle that I've seen and the best of the three (the other two were Tall T and Ride Lonesome). Even as late as halfway through I was still thinking this might be the last of the cycle I would watch: by the end I knew it wouldn't be. Generally I don't care much for Randolph Scott's wooden stiffness, his fussy little neckties and his strangulated way of speaking, or for the women-as-property shit, or for the whole bad-injuns thing - but I actually really enjoyed this one despite those things. The plot is standard but no less entertaining for it, and I particularly liked the Dobie sub-plot.

  I think I'll give Boetticher and old Randy another shot.