A sweeping family saga that feels somewhat incomplete and missing important details, aided by a terrific yet dangerous reel towards the end. It's a story of how families don't always get along and how issues of the past never completely go away. Wealthy and powerful rancher Joseph Cotten isn't happy to find his estranged brother Van Johnson hiding in his home when he returns one night, knowing that he's been in prison for murder.
Johnson had killed someone who attacked him in a barroom brawl, and now is desperate to get to his family in Mexico. Against his better judgment, Cotten tries to help him, but neighbor Jack Carson trails him along with the law to get Johnson back in prison. Much of the meat of the novel this was based on seems to have been cut, so a lot of the important details surrounding the brother's history is only glossed over, especially why Cotten didn't even tell his wife Ruth Roman that he had a brother.
This ends up feeling a bit overglossed because the lavish production seems to lack a good extra 20 minutes that would have improve this mightily. Roman is wasted in what could have been a good path, as is Nancy Gates as Van's wife. An enthusiastic performance by Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez as a friendly tenant of Cotten's is a highlight as is the use of a flooding river that the two brothers try to cross towards the end. The fault of the film's weakness isn't the director's (Henry Hathaway), but the person who decides to chop this down for multiple daily showings.
Johnson had killed someone who attacked him in a barroom brawl, and now is desperate to get to his family in Mexico. Against his better judgment, Cotten tries to help him, but neighbor Jack Carson trails him along with the law to get Johnson back in prison. Much of the meat of the novel this was based on seems to have been cut, so a lot of the important details surrounding the brother's history is only glossed over, especially why Cotten didn't even tell his wife Ruth Roman that he had a brother.
This ends up feeling a bit overglossed because the lavish production seems to lack a good extra 20 minutes that would have improve this mightily. Roman is wasted in what could have been a good path, as is Nancy Gates as Van's wife. An enthusiastic performance by Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez as a friendly tenant of Cotten's is a highlight as is the use of a flooding river that the two brothers try to cross towards the end. The fault of the film's weakness isn't the director's (Henry Hathaway), but the person who decides to chop this down for multiple daily showings.