Rent Man of the West (1958)

Hell's Grandpas - Man of the West review by Count Otto Black

Anthony Mann was, along with Budd Boetticher, one of the grittiest and most interesting directors of westerns in the fifties. Unfortunately, despite having all the right ingredients in the pot, he comes a little unstuck here. The setup is extremely formulaic, and you'll see it in lots of westerns from this period. The hero, a woman he doesn't know who will become his love interest, and the cowardly, annoying man she's initially with (who might as well have "DOOMED" tattooed on his forehead) are captured by a gang of utter degenerates, the leader of which for some reason decides not to immediately kill the hero when he knows he ought to, and you can guess how it plays out from there. The trick on the director's part is to make a predictable situation tense and interesting.

The basic idea of Gary Cooper being a good man with a dark past which suddenly pops up again, although it's another genre cliché, isn't a bad one, and the wrinkle that the nastiest outlaw in the territory is his adoptive father, who therefore has a very strong motive not to kill him when he obviously should, ought to work just fine. The elephant in the room is Lee J. Cobb as the oddly-named Dock Tobin (they actually spell it out so we know he isn't called "Doc" - I haven't the faintest idea why). His performance brings to mind both Robert Newton's archetypal Long John Silver and Billy Bob Thornton's Bad Santa, neither of whom has any business being in a western. It's true that he's playing a psychopath in the early stages of Alzheimer's, but even so there are times you wish he'd tone it down a bit. And given that most of his gang would nowadays qualify for some kind of incapacity benefit and even he repeatedly admits they're useless (a fact they demonstrate very early on), it's hard to see why they haven't been rounded up and hanged yet.

The script reunites our hero with these worthless excuses for human beings in ways that rely on outrageous coincidence, and sometimes make no sense at all. The woman is there to be maltreated to a degree that becomes gratuitously nasty. The hero is there to do what a man's gotta do. And everybody else who isn't an extra is there to be shot. It has its moments, and Gary Cooper really is rather good, but I didn't believe in the characters or the the set-up, and there's something pointlessly nasty about it all. And Lee J. Cobb is definitely in the wrong movie.

No Fresh Starts: A Western That Leaves a Bruise - Man of the West review by griggs

Some Westerns pretend the frontier is a fresh start. This one treats it like a life sentence. Man of the West is bleak on purpose — a hard, miserable ride with zero interest in comfort or myth.

Gary Cooper’s Link comes across as calm, decent, almost gentle, and the film leans into that. You’re waiting for the old violence to show itself, and when it does, it hits hard. Link ends up travelling with Billie (Julie London), and Dock Tobin’s gang won’t leave her alone. The key moment is nasty: Link turns the humiliation back on Coaley (Jack Lord) in a brutal reversal — less catharsis than cold shock — and it’s a blunt reminder of why people used to fear him.

Anthony Mann keeps the pressure on with sharp staging and boxed-in frames that make everything feel trapped. The ending doesn’t so much build as close in, until there’s nowhere left to go. Cooper isn’t the most flexible presence here, but Lee J. Cobb is unforgettable as Dock: feral, pathetic, terrifying, sometimes all in the same breath.

Western Man - Man of the West review by NO

A little bit different but gradually becomes predictable.Cooper looks old for a romantic hero & Cobb acts over the top.Julie London a jazz singer doesnt sing & what happened to the song shown in the title-it isnt on the DVD nor is the rape scene.Jack Lor d plays against type but nevertheless this is a fine Western.