HottWwjdIam There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

Sharkflei Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Michelle Ridley The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Wuchak Released in 1940 and directed by William Wyler, "The Westerner" stars Gary Cooper as a, well, Westerner who is wrongfully accused of horse theft in West Texas and sentenced to hang by the dubious "Judge" Roy Bean (Walter Brennan). The story focuses on cattlemen vs. homesteaders with the latter represented by Doris Davenport and Forrest Tucker (his debut). How do you review an old Western like this when you can't stand B&W or old-fashioned scores, not to mention the incongruent hokey elements? Basically you have to ignore all these factors and concentrate on the story and the actors. If you can do this, "The Westerner" is somewhat worth checking out, if you like the cast. Cooper was lean & mean at 38 (during shooting) and Brennan is amusing as the judge at 45. There are some genuinely comical moments, but parts of the story are too contrived and quaint, like the whole lock of hair element. Too much of the movie comes across as an old sitcom rather than an old realistic Western, like the excellent "Stagecoach" (1939). Thankfully, Doris Davenport is a spirited and winsome cutie here. The film runs 100 minutes and was shot in Arizona. The script (by no less than six people) was based on a story by Stuart N. Lake. GRADE: C

Hunter Lanier Roger Ebert introduced "The Cole Rule," which is 'no movie made since 1977 containing a character with the first name "Cole" has been any good.' "The Westerner," starring Gary Cooper as Cole Harden, came out in 1940.The film centers around Harden and Roy Bean (Walter Brennan), the barman and self-proclaimed judge of Vinegaroon, Texas. Bean has a tendency of serving capital punishment as easily as he serves whiskey. When Harden shows up on the scene--the classic drifter who comes from "no place in particular" and who's going "no place special"--telling tales of trysts with Lily Langtry, Bean's hanging ways are brought to a halt, at least for a little while. You see, Bean is madly in love with Langtry, a famous actress, despite not ever meeting or seeing her in the person; in fact, he has pictures of her plastered over nearly ever square-inch of his bar and bedroom. As great as Cooper is as the reluctant hero of above-average intelligence, Brennan is the star, delivering one of--if not the best of--his performances. He inhabits a "judge" Roy Bean who's at both times dangerous and pitiful. In his initial intellectual face- off with Harden--which quickly devolves into empty feats of masculinity--Bean comes off as a fierce, no-nonsense sociopath, incapable of sentiment. However, at the mere mention of Langtry, his face melts into a picture of childish affection. He's so good, that despite being the antagonist, the ways in which the hero manipulates Bean's schoolboy crush are borderline heartbreaking. Brennan rightly won the Academy Award that year. "The Westerner" is also home to one of the all-time great shootouts. It's comically realistic, as these aren't two sharpshooters, but they know how a gun works. So, naturally, they run around, shooting blindly and hiding behind things, as anybody in a shootout would. To boot, there's an orchestra between the two of them, so occasionally a bullet will graze an instrument, creating a natural, offbeat score to match the scene.In 1972, John Huston released another film based on the legend of Bean entitled, "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean," starring Paul Newman as the "judge," which is likewise an outstanding film. It's been a while since I've seen it, so I can't compare the two movies like I wish I could.Given the eclectic personality of the real-life Bean, "The Westerner" is a refreshingly quirky western, and is worthy of its source material.

moonspinner55 It's "Judge" Roy Bean and his bloodthirsty cattlemen against the hard-working homesteaders in post-Civil War Texas, with drifting 'saddle bum' Gary Cooper caught between the warring sides. William Wyler's cloudy, dusty, majestic western suffers a bit from an unresolved unhappiness at its core (and a conflicting attitude towards Walter Brennan's hang-'em-high Judge, who happily wields a cold-blooded sense of immorality yet is built up in the film's preamble to be something of a hero!). Cooper, barely twitching a facial muscle, is supposed to be a crafty, quick-thinking sonuvabitch, but Cooper just doesn't exude that type of personality; he's rugged when he needs to be, and stalwart with the one eligible woman in town, but he's disappointingly one-dimensional. Brennan got the critical kudos (and a Supporting Oscar) for his work, although his Bean is hardly a dandy villain--and the brutalities suffered by the homesteaders leaves behind a bad taste for the film. Gregg Toland's fine cinematography and Dimitri Tiomkin's solid score are certainly helpful, as are the terrific supporting performances from Fred Stone and Doris Davenport (a curious choice for the female lead, but ultimately a good one). **1/2 from ****

Steffi_P Judge Roy Bean was a real historical figure, but the colourful myths that have sprung up out of what is know of his undoubtedly colourful life have made him a ripe subject for a number of largely fictional movies. There was a TV series in the 50s and a bizarre yet brilliant Paul Newman picture in 1973, but Bean could just as easily appear as a stock supporting character in somebody else's story. In The Westerner, he is the antagonist for one of Gary Cooper's upstanding Western heroes, in what is purportedly a tale of conflict between the cowboys and the farmers in old Texas. But whose story is this really? The judge is played by that superb character actor Walter Brennan, in the third and most well-earned of his three Oscar-winning appearances. Brennan was often a cheerfully silly comedy player but here his performance is wonderfully subdued. He barely seems to move, but his hypnotic presence and moody drawl seem to draw you into the screen. Cooper is similarly subtle, and some of the best moments in the picture are just the two of them silently staring each other down. There's a lot of work with props here, such as the ubiquitous shot glasses or the lock of hair, and it really helps to build up character and atmosphere. There is also a strong emotional turn from female lead Doris Davenport, whose career would probably have taken off had she not shortly afterwards been severely injured in a car crash.Director William Wyler was known for overseeing competent and smartly understated acting performances, and while I have written extensively about this in my reviews of his other pictures, this time I'm going to talk about his view of the West. Wyler cut his teeth making Western shorts in the silent era, and once quipped that he used to lie awake thinking of new ways for someone to get on or off a horse. The way he does things here however is very different to the approaches John Ford or Raoul Walsh. For the first half of The Westerner, the Western landscape is barely seen. Most of the scenes take place indoors, and not even a reminder of what lies beyond can be glimpsed through the window. During Cooper's "trial", the judge's pals press around the frame like a human wall, enclosing things further. Of course, there are outdoor shots, but these seem inconsequential, and are certainly not there to show off the beauty or grandeur of the landscape, which appears spiky and full of dry brush and stones. Then, about fifty or so minutes in, as Cooper's moral stance in defending the homesteaders and his romance with Davenport begin to unfold, so too does the glory of the plains, Wyler treating us to aesthetic pastoral scenes to reflect the change in tone. It doesn't last however, and for the tense finale we are back to closeted interiors.In part because of this late and brief blossoming of the scenery, and despite all the guns, dust and whiskey, The Westerner ironically doesn't really feel like a Western. It is more in the way of an Old West drama. Yes, it does feature Judge Roy Bean, iconic figure of the West, and it does star Gary Cooper, iconic actor of the Western, and it is even packaged as a "progress" Western about the settling of the land. But the performances are so intense, the relationship between Cooper and Brennan so fully-fleshed, that the context disappears, and the opening spiel about range wars and homesteaders is soon forgotten. What remains is a compelling tale of the battle of wits between two men, one old and experienced but blinded by obsession, the other young and sharp-witted. The legend of Roy Bean and his young nemesis takes on a grand stature here, and either one could be the Westerner of the title.