The Man from Laramie (1955)
This one got surprisingly better along the way. Started out seemingly as a pretty standard storyline with a stranger arriving in a small town in New Mexico and quickly finds himself in conflict with the family that “owns” the town. What makes this interesting is that unlike tons of other westerns with a similar setup, this movie is not about freeing a town of some unscrupulous ranch owner. James Stewarts character is really just looking for whoever sold weapons to the Apache because his brother was killed in an attack. Him arriving in town sets off all kinds of existing problems and the story opens up to quite an interesting plot with conflicts within this ranch family. The elderly almost blind patriarch who is trying to do what is best for his family and legacy, but his only son isn’t really up to the task. Another man is also working for him and he clearly wants to just do good but is frustrated by being set to basically babysit the hotheaded son. What I like about this whole dynamic conflict is that no one is an outright villain, even though they do questionable things. James Stewart plays his part as he should, though a tad one-sided angry all the time, but it was the rest of the cast that I appreciated most in this movie.
Rating: 4