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• Good last one for Cooper

  • Gerald Hege
  • 3/1/13

  Being his last one. Cooper finished off his western career in a fitting manor. His age had caught up with him and he displayed it as he should have. Very well done.

• Man of the West

  • Dashiell Barnes
  • 8/28/12

  A strong, attention-grabbing western. Cooper, in his greatest final role, is superb, London & O'Connell are great as Cooper's fellow hostages terrorized by Cobb, who hams it up as the antagonist. Usual in director Mann's western's is the lead gripped by personal history that violence can loosen & family ties that are stronger than the community, all expertly presented by Mann. An excellent, overlooked film that needs to be seen. I give it a 4.5/5.

• Before its time

  • Jeff Boston
  • 8/27/12

  Maybe this film failed in '58 for Cooper was too old for such fare and his many fans could not stomach the bilge, bite, and bile, all of which Hollywood has served up gratuitously since the late 60s. This movie is the opposite of almost all the hit Westerns at the time, like "The Magnificent Seven," where virtually no one bleeds, has a beard, or even gets their shirt dirty. The Coop-Lord fight scene was especially realistic, and the shootout scene was done intelligently in this well acted downer that was too graphic for Eisenhower era audiences.

• Dysfunctional western family

  • Jarrod McDonald
  • 10/29/09

  I really enjoyed this film. The cinematography was great. I didn't quite understand the purpose of the other male hostage from the train. He is basically there to step in front of Cooper and take a bullet for him...but why do the outlaws let him stay alive so long...what purpose does he really serve them? I can see them wanting the girl, but not the other guy. As for the female hostage, after she is forced to strip, she really recedes into the background for a large stretch of the film. I do like how Cooper's character humiliates Lord's character to get even for what had been done to the girl. The scenes in town toward the end of the picture conveniently managed to get by without having to show a lot of extras or townspeople in the background thereby giving the story and Coop's character a more isolated feel.

• A most excellent movie.

  • Kent Lowry
  • 5/3/07

  I love this movie. Bleak, frustrating and futile in the end for Gary Cooper's Link, a man who tries to turn his life around. If I'm not mistaken, this is Gary Cooper's last western. It's not too much of a stretch to see Sergio Leone's inspiration in this movie for his Westerns.

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