The Ride Back
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DVD Cover Information Actor: Anthony Quinn, Jorge Treviņo, Lita Milan, Victor Millan, William Conrad Director: Allen H. Miner, Oscar Rudolph Brand: QUINN,ANTHONY DVD: Region Code 1 Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled Picture Format: 1.33:1 Running Time: 79 minutes DVD Release Date: 2003-05-20 Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Studio: MGM (Video & DVD) |
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Movie Reviews of The Ride Back
Movie Review: Scared men make mistakes
Summary: 4 Stars
THE RIDE BACK opens with a couple of young boys playing marshal and bad guy on the sleepy streets of a small western town. One is play captured and led away at wooden gunpoint when a real gunshot is heard and Anthony Quinn storms out a barbershop, his face still covered with shaving cream, his gun still smoking. Cue Eddie Albert - yes, that Green Acres' Eddie Albert - to sing the title song, "The Ride Back." Roberto "Bob" Kallen (Quinn) flees, presumably over the border into Mexico, and the audience next joins up with Sheriff Chris Hamish (William Conrad), extradition papers in hand, soon to be on the trail south to bring Kallen back north to face trial for the killing.
Hamish eventually finds his man, and the bulk of the movie chronicles their ride back to justice. When I first popped this dvd in the player I thought THE RIDE BACK was going to rehash the popular and acclaimed 3:10 TO YUMA, another western about a flawed representative of the law transporting a crafty criminal to justice. 3:10 TO YUMA was a popular and critical hit, but I had to jettison that theory when I learned that THE RIDE BACK was released about 4 months prior to 3:10.
The movie has a good look to it, and Conrad and Quinn are effective. Their characters are nicely nuanced. For instance, the first confrontation between Kallen and Hamish contains this engaging little piece of repartee - Kallen: You don't look to me like you're much. Hamish: I'm not. Kallen is there to mock and ridicule, Hamish is brutish and defensive. THE RIDE BACK is an `adult' western of the 1950s, and it's more or less a given that the trail will be filled with dangers, the bad guy will try to escape, the two lead characters will grow and change and reach a level of mutual understanding and respect.
An internet source has it that THE RIDE BACK is adapted from a Gunsmoke radio program episode. It's an intriguing possibility. Conrad played Matt Dillon on the radio in the 50s and early 60s. Too short and too portly for television (at least until the 1970s), Conrad was rejected in favor of James Arness when Gunsmoke premiered as a television series in 1955. It must have been a blow to his ego, and the William Conrad produced THE RIDE BACK may have been his response to events.
I don't demand innovative techniques or stories from westerns. As long as the story is well blocked, the action proceeds with a logical flow, and the acting isn't distractingly bad, I'm satisfied. THE RIDE BACK meets or surpasses all those conditions, and I enjoyed it quite a bit.