Decision at Sundown

This 1957 Randolph Scott Western, directed by Budd Boetticher, makes very little sense as a traditional narrative—it's more like an absurdist essay on the the Western form—at least that's how it seems to me—watching in my usual way—piecemeal, decimated, distracted, on TV, between hideous commercials, and writing this as I'm watching. It starts out nicely, with Randolph Scott and his comic relief buddy (Noah Berry Jr.—who gets tragically killed the way buddies always do in movies). Randolph Scott, it turns out, wants to kill a man for revenge—I won't go into it. Anyway, he gets holed up in a stable for almost the whole movie. I wrote that the buddy was killed before it even happened—since you could see that coming down Fifth Avenue—and now it just did. This movie is kind of like Dog Day Afternoon (which happens to be on the other channel right now)—now that I think of it. It's someone holed up in a standoff for nearly the entire length of the movie, but it's not about the standoff—it's about everything that goes on around it—an essay on society, hypocrisy, hate, and fear. And then the most lovable character in the movie is killed. (Okay, maybe in DDA he wasn't the most lovable—he's a bit of a psychopath—but he's played by John Cazale who brought more heart to his roles than anyone could ever expect.) After the buddy was killed in this one, I kind of gave up on the (anti)hero, Randolph Scott, and the townspeople, and humanity. But the movie ultimately redeemed itself for me, because you can't help but expect one of those absurd turn-arounds at the end where the star ends up with a beautiful woman—but not in this one. People try to be nice to him, even, but he's just like a shell of a person. And then, not having had the satisfaction of revenge, and knowing that he couldn't help the people he loves—he rides off into the sunset, a broken man. Now that I think about it, this is actually a lot more like a Seventies movie than a typical, formulaic Fifties Western, like so many I've seen on TV lately. It must have been a satisfying picture to be involved with, even if—I'm guessing—a lot of people didn't get it.