Hangman's Knot
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Movie Reviews of Hangman's Knot
Movie Review: Is it that easy to kill a man?
Summary: 4 Stars
The only feature film directed by Roy Huggins, who also wrote the screenplay and made a career as a writer for TV westerns and crime dramas, as well as writing a few other films in the noir and western genres in the late 40s and early 50s, HANGMAN'S KNOT is on the surface a rather typical men-holed-up-against-superior-odds tale, but it has enough neat little twists, and good enough characterizations to make it stand out as above average in Randolph Scott's impressive 1950s filmography. With exteriors done in the same Alabama Hills where the more famous Ranown series films with Budd Boetticher were shot a few years later, and with production handled by Harry Joe Brown with assistance from the star, it's no surprise that the film starts out with something of the look and feel of the later films - with one cardinal difference, and that being that Scott isn't a man alone here.
This time out he's Major Matt Stewart, leader of a small company of Confederate soldiers bent on ambushing a Union stagecoach full of gold. This the group does, killing a dozen bluecoats, but at the cost of three of their own. The five men take the gold for a rendezvous with Stewart's commander, Captain Petersen, but not before they've heard a dying Northerner blurt out that the war is over. Turns out the Captain knew about it, which prompts the angry and hotheaded Rolph (Lee Marvin) to shoot him dead on the spot. Stewart keeps his cool, knowing he'll need his most experienced man if they're to fend off posses and marshals, and get back home. What to do with the gold is discussed, but not decided before the group waylays another stagecoach with a couple of passengers, Lee Kemper (Richard Denning) and Molly Hull (Donna Reed), his fiancee. With a larger posse in hot pursuit, Stewart and his men make it to a way station and hold up there, and this becomes the setting for the last 2/3 of the film.
The tension in HANGMAN'S KNOT is built up very well; of course we know, this being a conventional 50s western, that Scott's hero character will pull through, but the rest of it we're allowed to keep guessing. There is also a theme of when and how violence can be justified running through the film - the quote I used for my title is from early in the film, and represents the difference between the Major, who hates to kill and tries to avoid it, and Rolph, who cares nothing about anything but his own hide and pleasure. Marvin's character soon attains the role of chief antagonist, even as the Major and his men find that they can't necessarily trust Molly or Lee, or the daughter (Jeanette Nolan) of the old and relatively friendly station agent (Clem Bevans), who hates the Confederates for the deaths of her husband and son. Complicating matters further is the growing evidence that the posse that has them penned in are nothing more than bandits themselves - and their capture of one of the Major's men (Frank Faylen). The men explore various ways to get out of their predicament and keep coming up short, but events partially out of their control conspire to force them to take action quickly.
It's all very nicely put together and beautifully photographed in Technicolor by Charles Lawton Jr., with Scott and Marvin the standouts in an excellent cast; they make a fine couple of adversaries and I wish they'd gotten to work against each other more often. Marvin is in the typical vicious mode he played so often early on - but with less humor than usual - and Scott is upright and moral as always, but also rather sad and a bit fatalistic. I do have a problem with the weaselly character of Lee; maybe I've just seen too many craven fiancee/boyfriend/husband characters in westerns of this period (especially Randolph Scott westerns), and it's getting old. And the scenes with Nolan's Mrs. Harris and the young Jamie, a boyish surrogate son to the Major, as the two try to mend the hatreds of North and South in one night of discussions just come off as a little too well-meaning and Hollywood. But these are very minor complaints, and one could say that, on the flipside, they're signs that this simple genre was always trying to add some nuance to the tired old cliches - even if sometimes they were just creating new cliches in the process.
If I had to boil it down to just a few words, I'd just say this: Randolph Scott could do no wrong in the films he made from about 1950 on, so get this and all of them if you're a fan.
Movie Review: The Civil War out West
Summary: 4 Stars
It seems somehow very fitting that Randolph Scott, who never really made it to the A-list of Western stars (though he was one of the top box-office stars of the '50's), should head up the cast in this movie, which focuses on the neglected subject of the guerrilla actions fought over much of the American West in 1861-5, as the Confederacy struggled to detach the gold-rich Territories and California from the Union, busy the Army with Indian uprisings, and keep itself financed by hijacking bullion shipments. Himself a Virginian, he plays Maj. Matt Stewart, a Confederate officer who leads a small band of partisans in a daring and cleverly plotted theft of a load of Comstock gold--only to discover that Lee has already surrendered. Now he faces the dilemma of what to do with the gold--keep it and be branded an outlaw, return it and risk being hanged by overzealous Union supporters? What's worse, there's soon a posse on the trail of his band, led by the slyly sinister Quincey (Ray Teal), who may have their own plans for the gold. Donna Reed plays a former Union nurse who, with her fiance, is aboard the stagecoach that gets swept up in the affair; Claude Jarman, Jr., who played John Wayne's son in Rio Grande, appears as young Jamie Groves, the "kid" of Stewart's band; and a young (age 28) Lee Marvin offers a delightful foreshadowing of his part in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance as Rolph Bainter, who, like Quincey, has his own ideas about what should be done with the swag. There's plenty of good pace and steadily ratcheting tension and a satisfying ending. This may be one of the best movies to begin with if you're unfamiliar with Scott's sizeable Western ouevre.Movie Review: knuckleheads-the war is over!
Summary: 4 Stars
This film must have had a touch of de ja vu for Randolph Scott. As in his 1940 "Virginia City", he is in charge of a stolen Yankee gold shipment in Nevada, meant to help the Confederacy prolong the War. In both cases, this operation occurred just before or just after the War was over. Thus, the question is:What should be done with the gold? They couldn't just give it back to Federal authorities, as they had killed 7 soldiers in stealing it, even if they believed they were acting on behalf of their government. Most of the film involves fending off bandits who know for sure what to do with the gold. In the end, it's not clear(to me) the eventual fate of the gold. Perhaps a fate basically similar to that of the gold in "Virginia City"? More likely, the remaining hostages(now their declared friends!), returned it to Federal authorities, explaining that the theives had all been killed in a shootout with another bandit gang or by themselves(not true)... A good action western. The plot is not complicated, but the basic situation is, especially for the ex-Confederates and their hostages.Movie Review: Horrendous body doubling of Scott and Marvin.
Summary: 2 Stars
With the monthly release of classic films on DVD now all but dead outside of expensive DVD On Demand archive programs which are currently only available outside the US via inflated Amazon prices and extortionate shipping costs and with Sony Home Entertainment being the only studio left releasing box sets every few months (I thought I'd be dead by the time the Budd Boetticher Collection actually got released.), I finally have breathing space between releases to start reducing a considerable pile of as yet unwatched DVD's stacked on shelves gathering dust.
Hangman's Knot was the second in a Randolph Scott double bill I got around to watching with the first being Santa Fe. Hangman's Knot would be the more enjoyable of the two for me. I do agree with some of what is said in the 5 star and 4 star reviews regarding plot and performances expressed by other reviewers, so I don't need to repeat it here. For my viewing enjoyment, I would have to consider Hangman's Knot to be an average 3 star film. To give it anything above 3 stars would be putting it next to other Scott outings such as The Tall T, Riding Shotgun, Ride Lonesome, Seven Men From Now, and a few others which I don't feel Hangman's Knot deserves.
So why only the 2 star rating? I had to take a star off because of the absolutely horrendous stunt doubling during a major fight sequence between Randolph Scott and Lee Marvin. I can't understand how this has not been brought up in other reviews because it's so plainly obvious. I can't image that even back in 1952, audiences would not have noticed such obvious stunt doubling, especially so when sitting in front of a massive cinema screen.
Around the half way mark, Scott and Marvin come to blows, a release of tension between these two characters that had been building for the proceeding 40 minutes. When the camera shot switches to the stand in stunt men during the fight, it is embarrassingly obvious that it is neither Scott nor Marvin on the screen.
You can clearly see the faces of the stunt actors. Scott's double looks to be around 30 years old standing in for Scott who was 54 years old at this time. The director made no attempt to mask the fact that these two men wearing the same clothes as Scott and Marvin are stunt men. Their faces are in full view for the duration of the fight. This spoiled my enjoyment of what was up to that point a good Scott western. Also off note is that the exact same thing also happens in Santa Fe when Randolph Scott's stunt double steps in during a fight scene on a moving train and it is clearly obvious that it is not Scott.
As previous reviewers have said, there is still much to enjoy in Hangman's Knot if you can ignore the doubling of the fight scene. Scott plays the stand up honest man with his own code of honour that he portrays so well in so many of his westerns and which is why I find him so enjoyable to watch on screen, but, I just can not get past that fight scene.
Hangman's Knot is for it's second half, a siege film with Scott and several others trapped in a wagon station house, fighting off a posse bent on getting the gold Scott and his gang now possess. Another reason for my low rating is, near the end of the film, the posse, tired of waiting for Scott and the others to come out of the station house, decide to burn them out. I found myself asking why they hadn't done this much earlier when the posse first got to the station house at the very beginning. The posse had shown earlier that they didn't care about innocent passers by getting killed by there bullets, they wanted the gold. Perhaps I am picking to much at Hangman's Knot but I feel that this is a valid point and seems to me to be lazy plotting.
A disappointed Scott fan.
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