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A typically clenched André De Toth arrangement (the camera moves from rocky hilltop to pocket watch in fist to crouching gunslinger) sets up a gentle joke, passengers during a stagecoach robbery are treated to such an opulent picnic by the robbers that a schoolmarm asks them for the recipe. "The Champagne Bandits," whose leader (Raymond Massey) is a regular Robin Hood in his own mind: "Rob the poor, and they get a posse of outraged citizens after you. Rob a mine owner, and nobody cares." Tired of having gold shipments hijacked, the bank invests in a train and hires an "independent" engineer (Randolph Scott) introduced hurtling through a saloon window. Estranged half-brother (Richard Webb) and editor's daughter (Lucille Norman) run a gazette at the eponymous town, "which could stand a little waking up." Progress like a tunnel through granite, "inconsequential" misspelled at the typesetter's press, rugged Warnercolor for all. The Golden Elephant Mine is the cover for "a pretty fancy bunch," a sagebrush dandy not above gunning down the snooping newspaper owner (Don Beddoe) where he stands. Laborers won't be served at the local watering hole, the foreman (William Haade) forces his way in so Scott can reprise his brawl from The Spoilers. A rescue following a landslide pulls the divided community together, suddenly it's like Anthony Mann revising Kameradschaft, a candle goes out as a drill pierces the darkness. A charming detail at the railroad inauguration finds a trombone player admiring the locomotive before rushing back to the band, the climactic shootout doubles as a fraternal reconciliation. "We do things big out here." The coda includes a whiff of The Front Page. With James Millican, Larry Keating, George Cleveland, Thurston Hall, and Vince Barnett.
--- Fernando F. Croce |