Winchester '73 (1950)
This classic 50’s western started really well. How we are introduced to Lin and Dutch, and the rifle of course, is simply perfect. The shooting competition is both tense and a little hilarious.
The movie keeps an overall high tempo with plenty of action, but I was a bit thrown off at first realizing that the main characters were not just Lin and Dutch, but the famous Winchester rifle. The movie leaves the two and their rivalry for quite a while to basically follow whoever has the rifle at the moment. My main problem with that is the characters we do get to follow instead are not nearly as great as Lin and Dutch. Lola was sort of an interesting female character, but her story made little sense to me. The second villain character, Waco, was great though. Simply batshit crazy and proper villainous with a black hat and all.
The final shootout between Lin and Dutch was amazing, but there are plenty of other long gunfight scenes before that and it almost went overboard with all the violence. Felt a bit unnecessary for the otherwise interesting rival between the two and looked mostly like an excuse for classic “cowboys & indians” action.
Still a western with many qualities, and I will definitely check more movies out from the Criterion Channels list of Anthony Mann directs James Stewart.
Rating: 3.5