Review of The Violent Men

Where has this cracking hard action hard riding hard action grade A western been all my life. I can hardly believe that i have missed it for so many years until i caught it on Film 4 tonight. The film has Glen Ford as the complex hero who hates violence but fights hard and brutally when cornered. Edward G Robinson and Barbara Stanwyck with Brian Keith make up the rest of a great A list cast all lined up against the immovable Glen Ford. With great big scale outdoor action all filmed with real scale that has hundreds of horses, and even more cattle, and scores of men, this is a western with epic above it's title. Here is a film that really uses the widescreen to the best effect with vista after vista of huge snow clad mountain ranges just on the horizon. The violence considered over done at the time (1955) seems routine now perhaps, but exactly why anyone in the fifties would of wanted to stay at home to google a 15" black and white flicker on a television set when the local cinema was showing a monument of a film like this escapes me. But then again i'm a movie going film buff. And this one thrilled me. A sound as a pound 8 from 10.