Decision At Sundown

I Don't Care If Your Arm's Shot Off. Draw!
One of a handful of remarkable Westerns made by the Ranown production team in the late 50's that established director Budd Boetticher as a master of the genre and Randolph Scott as an icon. All are small-scale, tightly witten, psychologically complex, and shine like polished nuggets. The least scenic of the brood, Decision nevertheless features some of the best one-liners of any Western, ( "Back where I come from, folks don't celebrate or make a big to-do when a man acts the way a man's supposed to act," snarls Scott's Bart Allison, surely one of the orneriest leads in all cowboydom). The plot itself concerns a revenge obsessed Allison upsetting Sundown's outward calm and toppling the town despot. It's fun to watch alliances rearrange among the shifty townspeople in response to the pig-headed Allison. Then too, suave bad-guy John Carroll more than matches mean-spirited good-guy Scott in the likability department, leaving the audience without the usual white-hat, black-hat stereotypes...

Bitterness and obsessive hate, plus choked back tears, make for an odd Randolph Scott role
I've always liked Randolph Scott westerns. It's hard not to if a person likes Scott's style, manner, authority and, in his movies with Budd Boetticher, his approach to being an aging, moralistic grim reaper in showdowns with bad guys like Lee Marvin and Richard Boone. I'll make an exception for Decision at Sundown.

What put me off was a drama without, for 50 minutes of the 77-minute running time, any gripping motivation for Bart Allison's (Randolph Scott) hatred. We know something, probably nasty, happened to Mary and that the slick Tate Kimbrough (John Carroll) had something to do with it. But what? Allison's sick obsession with killing Kimbrough ("For three years I've hunted Kimbrough, but he didn't know it. Before I settle with him I want him to know he's being hunted."), even on Kimbrough's wedding day when Allison arrives at Sundown, seems more like a plot device than a major justification for violence. With Kimbrough running the town, with a sly and cowardly sheriff...

The decision to see this was a good one...
I'm not really a Western person. I think I preface most of my reviews on Western's with that statement. I just have never really found them the most compelling genre, but I understand their appeal to many. Still, in my attempt to see everything of note and merit, I have seen my fair share of Westerns. In all honesty, I have to say that `Decision at Sundown' was one I wasn't at all anticipating and yet found very well constructed and much deeper than I expected.

With a complexity of storytelling that really embellished the film's themes, `Decision at Sundown' takes a familiar premise (that of a hatred fueled shootout) and infuses it with a backstory that feels very honest. It allows for character development in a way that isn't overbearing but that is thoughtful and multi-faceted.

The performances are all rather good. John Carroll is a supreme villain and works charisma into his stance, which only makes him all the more chilling, and Noah Beery Jr. is the...

Click to Editorial Reviews