150 Word Review: 'The Ox-Bow Incident' (1943)
Noose ends
This is a surprisingly grim and ugly western, which is also the reason it’s one of the genre’s best. Henry Fonda plays a cowboy who just wants a drink in a small, podunk town. His old flame lives there, too, or used to, at least. While at the town’s only saloon, Fonda’s character and his partner, a quiet Harry Morgan, get caught up in a fever: a local rancher has been murdered, and a lynch mob is quickly formed. The townspeople fall upon three men they immediately suspect of murder, and decide to hang, the law be damned.
The Ox-Bow Incident resembles the classic 1957 courtroom drama 12 Angry Men, but it’s darker. Crueler. What started out as a call for justice turns into bloodlust. Fonda’s character knows better, but knowing better isn’t always enough. No one plays exhausted, decent, world-weary everyman like Fonda. The rest of the cast? Memorable.
Truly a remarkable movie. I must take you to task for not mentioning the director, though. William Wellman may not be a familiar name nowadays but in my opinion he is one of the great. He had a knack for making deeply humane, empathetic movies, not unlike Elizabeth Gaskell in literature. At least in his pre-war and war period (I haven't seem any of his later movies).
This movie is also notable for one of the earliest sightings of the lovely Dana Andrews: he has a cameo role as one of the three unfortunates.