"We don't take kindly to strangers"

BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK

Year: 1955
Country: USA
Language: English
Number: 287
Director: John Sturges
Starring: Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, Walter Brennan, Anne Francis

Picture this: A western noir, which John Sturges' Bad Day at Black Rock happened to be. Seeing my first so called "western noir" It's simply one of the best and most suspense films I've seen until now in the western genre. Featuring great performances that we already know from this genre such as Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, Walter Brennan, Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin that all fits right into the film and makes the whole setting believable.

The movie is set in the year 1945. A town called Black Rock lies in the middle of the desert where the Southern Pacific Railroad train always pass by. But one day, the first time in four years the train actually stops there. But there's only one passenger that goes of the train. A war veteran named John J. Macreedy (Spencer Tracy) who has only one functional arm. Most of the inhabitants, who mostly are workers who spend most of the day just sitting rocking' in their chairs out in the hot sun, is very suspicious of this new stranger and wondering what is he doing here. They find out that he's looking for an old man named Komoko. But every where he ask about him, all the people of the little town are scared that he might stick his nose into something that shouldn't be any of his business.



Bad Day at Black Rock is a very well made western film, set in modern day where it doesn't seemed to have changed at all since the wild west. The crooks are pretty much the same and there's also no law at all. Robert Ryan does an excellent performance as the unofficial leader, Reno Smith who does every thing to get rid of the man who might reveal the towns darkest secret. The rest of the western cast is just superb, their appearance have the kind of "We don't take kindly to strangers" kind of feeling that really makes this film so exciting and thrilling to watch. I don't want to give away the ending, but I promise this movie doesn't ever drag.


Grade: A+


You can read all my reviews on:
http://www.flixster.com/user/filmfreak93