The Man from Laramie

1955 Western

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A guy who rolls up the cuffs of his jeans brings a load of supplies from Laramie to Coronado, a dinky town controlled by a rancher named Waggoner. Secretly, he wants to get to the bottom of who's selling rifles to the Apaches. He has a run-in with the mischievous Waggoner son, resulting in his wagons being burned and his mules being shot. He decides to stick around anyway and gets on everybody's nerves.

It's still hard for me to see Jimmy Stewart as a tough guy, but there's a terrific long shot of a very pissed-off Jimmy walking toward a guy who wronged him who apparently is also the cameraman. It made a believer out of me. The fisticuffs that follow, wrastlin' amidst a herd of cattle on the dusty streets, have a grit that lends a realism to the proceedings, as do a few gun fights that come later. We catch the stock characters in medias res, but as the story unfolds, there's a depth to them that I really like. That story's a little uneven at times, and there's a ludicrous explosion along the way. Parts of certain conflicts seemed unresolved or, when I did squeeze pieces together, didn't really fit right. Sort of like Jimmy Stewart's pants. There had to be easier ways for some of these characters to get what they wanted in the movie. Regardless, this is beautifully shot and well-acted Western that shows off the great American West in a story that, although it wasn't, seems like it was pinched from the samurai.