Hollywood movies were almost always so thoroughly law-and-order in their two-dimensional mythmaking that westerns were put in a bind when they tried to "go dark" or even ambiguous on the theme. Henry King's Jesse James painted the post- civil war outlaw as the victim of evil banks and carpetbaggers, and went about as far as a film could go at the time to say that the "system" was rotten.

There were noir westerns in the late '40s that brought a psychological darkness and unease into the genre, but although The Man from Colorado has a dark theme, it doesn't follow through. Even the title seems like a pullback from what the story is really about; The Bloody Judge would fit the movie better.

This Borden Chase source tale focuses on the rough times right after the Civil War, when dispossed farmers and unhappy ex-soldiers became terrorists, robbing banks and burning whole towns on the Kansas Border. In Colorado, Union soldiers who fought against the South (even locally in the Sibley campaigns that formed the excuse for a Civil War background in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly) returned to their mining towns to find their claims usurped by opportunistic landowners.

Pal William Holden knows something's up in the beginning but he doesn't act, conjuring a mutual responsibility idea that never germinates. Holden enables Ford's unfair actions but only rebels after being betrayed by a man he knew to be mad in the first place. The film soon devolves into a series of posse raids, hangings, and accusations that only result in B-western action.

The Judge's main crime is to uphold the letter of the law that allows sharp businessman Ed Carter's use of a loophole to seize gold property that isn't his. The film encourages us to see this as a bad decision because it's unpopular and punishing to the innocent soldiers, whose only crime was to leave their land for three years to fight for the Union. Besides being a plea for veterans' rights (a touchy issue after WW2 when many veterans had a hard time finding decent housing), the movie implies that Ford's Judge should toss the law out the window and decide the matter on a non-legal sentimental basis. Since the crooked landowner was the one who nominated Ford to his office in the first place, you'd think the miner-veterans could stop the decision in its tracks - Ford is obviously in Ed Carter's pocket. In any normal situation, there'd be a payoff involved.

But Del lets Devereaux's judgment stand and good men become criminals to retaliate. Events drive Del and the girl away, and Judge Devereaux resorts to the extreme measure of burning down a mining town to capture the renegades. In true production code fashion, hero William Holden can be forgiven for participating in terrorist raids that result in the death of deputies, because he means well. Original rebel Jericho Howard (a good James Millican) has to die before the picture can end, to square things with the MPAA.

Glenn Ford has the same intensely unhappy look on his face throughout. William Holden's charm surfaces only intermittently, and the rest of the time he seems to be doing an Alan Ladd imitation. His sandy blonde hair and even the cut and fabric of his clothes resemble the Paramount star. Ellen Drew frets and worries and doesn't make much of an impression, and the rest of the cast are walk-on functionaries. Denver Pyle (Sheriff Hamner in Bonnie & Clyde) and Ray Teal have nice bits, however.

Columbia TriStar's DVD of The Man from Colorado looks great, with a nicely preserved composite negative given an excellent transfer. The cinematography is uneven, with the Stony Point-Santa Susana Pass locations looking as generic as they do in 50 other westerns, but some of the closeup work is nicely done. The audio is clear and simple.

Columbia's box artwork stresses Glenn Ford and mostly ignores William Holden. The disc formatting starts us off with three trailers that we can ditch out of, but it's a pain anyway and an unwelcome marketing decision. I'd really prefer that discs just launch into the movie after a short pause on the main menu screen in case one wants to change a playback function or see a trailer first. The simplified menuing on this disc points to cost-cutting over at the studio, but the visual quality of the show is fine, and that's what counts.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, The Man from Colorado rates:
Movie: Fair ++
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: Trailers for Gilda, Silverado and The Bridge on the River Kwai
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: June 5, 2004