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• Great early western....

  • Guy Gertsch
  • 4/28/09

  It's hard to imagine that such a well-known German director could make such an adept western, but Fritz Lang did. Based on the last novel that Zane Grey wrote before his death in 1939, the film contains little of the novel, except for the character name "Vance Shaw". The Dean Jagger character "Edward Creighton" is based on the actual builder of the Western Union, whose name was indeed Edward Creighton. The color in this film is great. Randolph Scott's performance as the good guy trying to outrun his past is one of his very best, and the final gunfight really startles the viewer. A great western, worth watching again.

• "Western Union" best of the western genre

  • Jeff Simmons
  • 6/10/08

  This is Randolph Scott's best performance until Ride the High Country. It epitomizes the good bad man, and why he had the range to play heroes and villains (such as in The Spoilers and his anti-hero in Ride the High Country). Only Robert Young seems out of place here. Fritz Lang uses a lot of his German expressionist techniques to tell the story, such as the use of shadows and all the Christian and Christ imagery (Scott burns the ropes off his hands), the presentation of a telegraph pole as a cross on Randy's grave. There's apparently some controversy as to whether this is actually based on the book by Zane Grey, or if the novel was based on the screenplay. GREAT early use of technicolor, or whatever the process was.

• One of the great westerns ever

  • Chuck Herman
  • 3/15/08

  A perfect cast... One of Randolph Scotts best westerns... Beautifully filmed... This film is underated....

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