Seven Men From Now

I only caught the latter half of this one. Dad stopped flipping through the channels when he came across it, because that's what you do for a Randolph Scott movie.

Seven men pull of a robbery, and Scott - playing a former sheriff named Ben Stride - pursues them. Except he finds a wagon with a young couple, Annie and John Greer, in trouble and winds up escorting them as well. And while he's in the midst of doing that, he's joined by a couple of bounty hunters, I guess, one of them (Bill Masters) played by Lee Marvin. Annie is kind of attracted to Stride, but he plays it cold, because he carries a lot of guilt over his wife's death. He was a good sheriff, but not much for campaigning, so he lost the most recent election. I have never understood why sheriff was an electable position, for precisely that reason. You just wind up with the guy who makes the most sweet-sounding promises. So the electorate gets the sheriff they deserve.

Anyway, Stride was offered a deputy position, but wouldn't take it. Nor could he find any other work he deemed worthy of himself. So his wife took a job, and wound up killed during the robbery. Whoops.

Pride is a real theme through the movie. Pride cost Scott's character his wife (or that's how he sees it). John Greer has mostly swallowed his pride. He's not a gunfighter, or much of a fighter period, and Bill Masters ridicules him for it repeatedly, calling him 'half a man'. But John, unlike Stride, was willing to take a job he didn't care for, because he felt he had to provide for Annie. But ultimately, the cost is too high. And even Masters has a little pride. He's generally a cutthroat, greedy, always with that air of a predator waiting for the moment to strike. But he's impressed by John, and admires Stride enough he didn't want to have to kill him for the money. His pride keeps him from throwing in with men he considers even worse than him, but also keeps him from maybe recognizing when it's better to call it a day. Or at least not approach his opponent directly.

The end gunfight is a surprising anticlimax. Stride's bleeding from some head injury, using his rifle as a cane. Yet he's still able to draw his pistol so quickly Masters can't even get either of his guns out of their holsters. Usually the bad at least draws his pistol and gets to fire the token shot into the ground as he clutches his belly. I commented that seemed ridiculous considering Stride's injuries and the fact he's probably concussed, and my dad generally agreed. He did chide Masters, because Masters wore his gun belt up high, but wore his pistols backwards, the grips pointing out in front of him, rather than behind. Combined with the fact he wasn't using a cross draw (pull the gun on the right hip with the left hand, and vice versa), it's just a very awkward set-up.

It makes sense when he explains it, though the next problem is, I can't figure how Masters survived that long handicapping himself that way.