Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: Ride Lonesome!

Some spoilers below.

"But Pat, in this movie they all ride together!" Filtered by the very title. For shame!

If John Wayne's finest moment was Tall in the Saddle (and pay no attention to consensus; it was), Randolph Scott's must be Ride Lonesome, one of a number of low-budget, character-driven pieces that brood over such concerns as trust and betrayal, guilt and redemption, and whether the past can be overcome or will persist in haunting us indefinitely. None of this sounds like much fun, but Ride Lonesome never lets its weighty themes overpower its merits as an entertainment spectacle.

Have you ever actually seen smoke signals used in a western before? You have now.

Scott plays the coolest-named western hero, BEN BRIGADE, a bounty hunter who, in the movie's opening, faces off with reckless young outlaw Billy, whom we will later learn has a still meaner big brother: the ubiquitous Lee Van Cleef. Brigade hopes to escort Billy to justice, staying one step ahead of Van Cleef, but his plans are complicated when he's forced to team up with outlaw Sam Boone (Pernell Roberts, whose name is "Pernell", in a standout role) at a waystation beset by local Mescaleros, who soon reveal their design to purchase the waystation's lone female occupant (Karen Steele) as a bride for the low, low price of her late husband's horse, in a cross-cultural faux pas reminiscent of the time the Aztec tlatoani married the princess at Coatepec only to receive the in-laws for a social call wearing her flayed skin after sacrificing her.

Was it autism?

When Steele reacts with horror at this revelation of her husband's death, the Mescaleros sense the deal is off, so our motley collection of antiheroes find themselves pursued by the Indians as well as Van Cleef's gang. To pile on still further, Brigade must keep a watchful eye on Boone and Billy, against the threat of treachery and an escape attempt respectively, while Boone and his sidekick keep their eyes fixed squarely on the pulchritudinous Steele.

Don't you think it's time we all just admitted busty blondes actually are the correct genre of women?

It's an elaborate Jenga tower of risk and tenuous alliances, threats from within and without, keeping the viewer guessing how the blocks are going to fall until the final minutes of the kino. As we get to know our cast of desperadoes better, our feelings toward them gnarl and complicate. Pernell plays Boone with a knife-edge balance of charm and threat. Scott, typically poker-faced, reveals a tightly dammed-up pain as secrets of his past and future plans are drip-fed to the viewer. By the time the fateful third act rolls around, no more cinematic portent could you ask for than the movies' most foreboding tree:

Watch Ride Lonesome today.