The Badlanders

I stumbled onto this one accidentally, and I'm glad I did.

Davies always worked with Borgnine to fine advantage, but the electricity of his pairing with late-in-career Ladd is an unanticipated delight. And, Borgnine's chemistry with then-wife Jurado is hotter still. Couple that with a deliciously foppish performance by feckless Kent Smith and excellent supporting work from Anthony Caruso and Ford Rainey and sharp-edged dialogue. The result is a fast-paced keeper.

I saw The Badlanders when it first came out in 1958 in theaters. It was my first acquaintance with both Alan Ladd and Ernest Borgnine. Then as now it's a good action packed western. But that's all it is.

I didn't know at the time that this same plot had been done so much better by John Huston in The Asphalt Jungle. All the subtlety and character development that Huston had was sacrificed for action. Delmar Daves is a pretty good director of westerns and action is what they got here.

Mind you The Badlanders is a good film for the Saturday afternoon trade, but it was done so much better before.

Alan Ladd is Peter Van Hoek, mining engineer who has a heist in mind of his former employers. He's the Sam Jaffe of this version. He's looking for confederates and he enlists a former cell-mate from Yuma prison who is played by Ernest Borgnine. Sterling Hayden in the first version.

Ladd was on the downward side of his career. The Badlanders is a perfect example of the kind of films he was doing after Shane, routine action flicks which could easily have been done as the plot of any number of television westerns that were sprouting all over the place at that time.

Ernest Borgnine was still on the crest of his career from his Oscar winning performance in Marty three years before. He even got his then wife Katy Jurado in this film as his love interest.

Nice cast that's familiar to western lovers round out the film. But everyone here has done better.

Vividly filmed in Cinemascope in the best late-50's MGM style, this loose remake of The Asphalt Jungle in a Western setting has some good acting and takes a different road. The relationship of Alan Ladd and Ernest Borgnine is consistently interesting and unpredictable throughout, and Katy Jurado offers a standout performance. Ultimately less grim than its source material, this one has a satisfying resolution, and the action that leads to it holds the interest the entire way. A solid Western that deserves a significant place in both of its stars' filmographies.

Because this remake of Huston's "The Asphalt Jungle" cuts to the chase swifter than the original, it's a much more satisfying version of that story. While it retains much of the strengths of Burnett's script (the crisp dialogue, the class structure of the underworld) it benefits from the Western setting; the gold heist is engaging, the women are better integrated into the tale, the threat is more present.) Alan Ladd, while a bit puffy at this stage in his life, is still charming and clever enough for the lead. Borgnine is a more robust thug than Sterling Hayden ever dreamed of being. And the supporting cast is every bit as colorful and quick in their delivery. (Character actor Tony Caruso appears in both films, a lot more lively as Comanchee.) I have seen this film a dozen times and admire it's efficiency.

Toward the end, there is a scene that I recognized almost word for word from a similar scene in The Asphalt Jungle, then I realized that the whole thing is a close approximation. The family man safe cracker is the family man "powder monkey", the heavy Borgine is the thug Sterling Hayden (with their girlfriends of questionable repute), the financiers with their bought lawmen and molls are the same, the caper is similar. This one is a bit more lightweight than the former.

Maybe it would have worked better as a noir in B&W but not a bad film.