Lawman
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Movie Reviews of Lawman
Movie Review: lawman fronteir terminator...?
Summary: 4 Stars
burt lancaster as a well focussed no non- sense marshalreminded me of the sci fi movie terminator with a western flair.
the movie had a bunch of western movie character types, and it moves along at a good pace...robert ryan as a worn out
sheriff, workin for the land baron, and his need for self
respect again also played a good part in the movie storey.,
if there was a part 2 sequal...tom beringer could just as well
play the marshal jarod maddox...!
Movie Review: Lancaster Calls the Shots
Summary: 4 Stars
"Lawman" (1971) features Burt Lancaster and Robert Ryan at the top of their game in this decidedly nontraditional Western. Both stars are surrounded by an excellent supporting cast (notably Lee J. Cobb and Joseph Wiseman) and striking Mexican locations. Though director Michael Winner gets carried away with the zoom shots, the contemporary style works in the film's favor. A genuine sleeper that predates the postmodernity of Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven."Movie Review: A great Western but a criminal DVD transfer
Summary: 3 Stars
If nothing else, Lawman proves that there is such a thing as a script so good that not even Michael Winner could screw it up, although having an excellent cast doesn't hurt. Burt Lancaster is the lawman of the title, determined to bring in several cattlemen (Robert Duvall among them) only to find that the local boss Lee J. Cobb owns the town and its once famous, now cowardly world-weary sheriff Robert Ryan, who all but steals the film. Curiously, Ryan far preferred this film to The Wild Bunch, though that may be down to Winner's deference to his stars compared with the thoroughly miserable time he had working with Peckinpah (there's another Peckinpah connection in composer Jerry Fielding, who contributes a good, brooding score). Joseph Wiseman, Richard Jordan, Albert Salmi and Sheree North are also thrown into the mix, and surprisingly all of them have well defined characters in what becomes an increasingly complex morality play about the void between what's legal and what's practical as Lancaster begins to realize that his strict adherence to the letter of the law has left him with nothing else in his life.
At times Gerald Wilson's script is perhaps a tad overwritten - everyone gets their big scene explaining their worldview, with no-one truly bad, merely weak - but it's a forgivable weakness. Winner's not quite as overly reliant on crash zooms as usual, though his characteristic laziness does manifest itself in one scene that has characters ride up to Cobb's house in darkness and come into the room in daylight, but for someone like Winner that's almost verging on the competent by his standards. Sadly MGM/UA's Region 1 DVD is a stinker of a transfer, looking like it was shot through a dirty window. The trailer is the only extra.
Movie Review: One more DVD RipOff !!!
Summary: 3 Stars
Why Oh Why- When we pay good=hard to get money for a great film like LAWMAN do we get a cut & butchered copy w/ many minutes missing-this is dim & we all are being RIPPED Big Time by the powers that be!!! Still a great movie & I did order it= but it is not the same film that I saw years ago at a cinema in my hometown of Glendale Ca,I'm really disappointed about the scene w/Burt & miss North in bed- the film I saw then showed her good looking breasts,but the DVD I received from AMAZON has those covered w/a sheet! that along w/all the other cut outs OMG we all are getting RIPPED.Lawman (1971) [VHS]Movie Review: Gory Western Melodrama Posing As Greek Tragedy [spoilers]
Summary: 2 Stars
LAWMAN is a gory, nihilistic Western melodrama, posing as a film with deep moral complexity. It's as if the story was built out of 70's cliches, then written up by a clever film student.
Lancaster portrays the grim marshal of Bannock, come to Sabbath to arrest a gang of cowboys who accidentally killed a man while they were on a drunken spree. Lancaster's refusal to negotiate, combined with the guilty parties' senseless determination to fight him, and the townspeople's meddling, eventually leads to a violent conclusion.
Only excellent performances by everyone in the cast lift this bit of pulp fiction up a few notches from what it would have been otherwise.
The movie is superficially fascinating on first viewing, but doesn't hold up to any careful thought. Nearly everyone in the movies acts irrationally, self-destructively, or fails to do what any normal person in the same situation would do.
Lancaster arrives in town all by himself, even though he's there to arrest 7-8 armed men all at the same time. The big boss (Lee J. Cobb) obviously isn't dumb or hot-headed, and he doesn't want any gunplay, but he doesn't do any of the things a smart, hard-working, calm, sensible cattle baron would really do under these circumstances.
Robert Ryan is the marshal of the town, but he never asserts himself over Lancaster, even though he opposes what Lancaster is doing, it's Ryan's jurisidiction and he could just order Lancaster to leave. None of the cowboys seem to show any concern about getting killed; in fact, it never even seems to occur to them to gang up on Lancaster (he couldn't possibly shoot all of them at once). Since none of them intentionally shot the victim, and they were all shooting off guns, and there's seven of them -- there would be no way a judge could sensibly convict any one man of the crime anyway.
Why did it take months for the original crime to be investigated? If J.D. Cannon's character is so cowardly, why wasn't he afraid enough of Lancaster to just surrender? If he's so sure Lancaster will kill him, why did he run away from him in broad daylight, like a sitting duck?
The movie just doesn't make any sense.
So though the premise and set-up seem interesting at the start, pretty soon you realize the whole story is a contrived violence machine driving to one place: a distasteful, 1970's downbeat ending and you shaking your head and saying "What was THAT?".