Ride the High Country

Filmmaker Sam Peckinpah's 1962 second feature (and first unqualified masterpiece) is a laconic tale about the end of the frontier that both celebrates and deconstructs the romantic view of Old West nobility and heroism. Peckinpah casts two veteran hands of the genre—Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea—as longtime friends and lawmen in their sunset years at the turn of the 20th century. McCrea is former marshal and straight shooter Steve Judd, who just wants to complete one last job—transporting and guarding a shipment of gold from a mountain mine to the company office. And Scott is Gil Westrum, now reduced to playing a sharpshooter in a sideshow, who signs on as Judd's backup but schemes to steal the gold for himself. Mariette Hartley costars and Peckinpah fills the supporting cast with actors who would go on to become his familiar stock company, including R.G. Armstrong, L.Q. Jones, and Warren Oates. Ride the High Country has a hard edge but none of the savage violence that would define the director's later films, and the finale anticipates The Wild Bunch—albeit in a more old-school vein—with the tired elders standing up to a scruffy gang one last time to give themselves a shot at redemption. This role marked the end of the trail for Scott, who retired, and it was the final leading turn for McCrea. A lovely Western that is also an American classic, Ride the High Country makes its Blu-ray debut, remastered from a gorgeous new 2K scan, with extras including audio commentary by a handful of Peckinpah biographers/documentarians, and a behind-the-scenes featurette. Highly recommended. (S. Axmaker)