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15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
'Modest' Western worth of all Sturges' bigger famous films., March 27, 2002
'The Law And Jake Wade' came out in the same year as Anthony Mann's last Western, 'Man Of The West', with which it shares many narrative, thematic and visual affinities. Both centre on ex-outlaws who have tried to turn away from a life of crime, but who are violently dragged back by companions from the past; the struggle in both is intensified by the presence of a woman as hostage/prize. Both feature aging Hollywood stars at or near the end of thir careers, and both climax in the heavily symbolic arena of a ghost town. The difference in quality between both films can be seen in the contrasting stature of their stars - Gary Cooper was one of the great icons of the Western, and a potent projection of America's self-image - his face scarred with age, and body wracked with cancer added to the phantom surroundings to create a genuine, austere, end-of-the-genre atmosphere. Robert Taylor, a matinee idol, brings no such baggage with him - void of iconic presence and resonance, 'Law' seems comparatively shallow.The film is still terrific entertainment, particularly in its second half, with the tensions within bad guy Richard Widmark's crew threatening violence; a fierce Indian raid, with the best-ever use of arrows in a Western, seeming to swoop down from a great distance at the viewer; and the long, mythical shoot-out. The film's characters and themes develop predictably - Taylor, who wants to rejoin civilisation by working as a lawman and marrying the daughter of a rich capitalist, must exorcise his violent, blood-stained past - and there are the usual homoerotic and Oedipal complications. There are interesting inflections - the crew's criminal activities are seen as extensions of their 'legal' duties as soldiers during the Civil War; while Taylor is one of the genre's more dim-witted heroes, a plan dodge a pursuer by taking convoluted by-ways is foiled by the fact that he has given the pursuer his horse - all Widmark has to do is let him go and follow him!; the great ritual of (moral) rebirth is cynically set in a ghost town's cemetary. What is most interesting about the film is its visuals. Sturges may lack the true intellectual rigour of a Mann or Boetticher, both of whom he imitates, but there is a compositional care in 'Law' absent from his more famous blockbusters. The widescreen patterning of characters against the landscape contributes to the film's meaning, and often works against the script; the central interior scene, as kidnappers and abductees wait for a Commanche attack, is like a very skip of civilisation. Although the relation between individual and landscape is not telegraphed, there are three brilliant Boetticher-like shots when the camera tracking Taylor slowly descends, levelling the ground and revealing the impassively monumental mountains behind him, exposing both his lack of solidity and a natural world indifferent to his fate. There is hardly a shot of a character that is not in some way framed by its environment; the disorienting mix of breathtaking location shots and deliberate backdrops furthers the theme.
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DVD ~ William Holden
DVD ~ Gregory Peck
DVD ~ Gregory Peck
DVD ~ Robert Taylor
DVD ~ Robert Mitchum
