150 Word Review: 'The Tall T' (1957)
Shoot first, don't ask questions later
Randolph Scott stars as lanky loner Pat Brennan in director Budd Boetticher's sunny, sinister cowboy noir The Tall T. He's handsome, and stoic. Born to sit in a saddle. Brennan is a good dude, too, the kind who'll buy candy in town for a boy on the frontier. Too bad that kid ends up dead, and thrown in a well.
The Tall T is based on an Elmore Leonard novel, which explains its zippy pacing and cast of chatty cutthroats. Richard Boone is an outlaw with a few scruples left, and Henry Silva is memorable as a psychopath. Scott's Brennan wants nothing more than his own ranch, and maybe Maureen O'Sullivan's Doretta by his side, a well-born woman with terrible taste in men. The Tall T looks old-fashioned—there's horses and six-shooters and rocks, big desert rocks jutting out of the ground. But, dangit, this movie has a mean heart.
Best Westerns: ‘Winchester ‘73’ (1950)
