Run for Cover

James Cagney takes on a rare frontier role in this 1955 Western, playing Matt Dow, a cowboy with a past (he served time for a crime he didn't commit) and a sense of duty to an orphaned young man named Davey Bishop (John Derek), who is crippled by a cowardly sheriff (shooting Davey before he gets all the facts). Cagney, better known for his street smarts and urban snap, is as tough as barbed wire and straight as an arrow, so the townsfolk make him their chief lawman, not merely as a way to apologize for his undeserved imprisonment but out of respect for his character and forthrightness. But alongside Dow's story, this is also a juvenile-delinquent drama with Davey as an angry young man, a self-pitying guy who is bitter about the hand that life has dealt him. Director Nicholas Ray's Run for Cover came out the same year as his other, better-known tale of misunderstood teens, Rebel Without a Cause, and it suffers in comparison. Derek has none of James Dean's anxious energy or expressiveness, and aside from a strong performance by Cagney this is otherwise a conventional example of the genre. Viveca Lindfors and Jean Hersholt costar as immigrant farmers, while Ernest Borgnine also has a small role. Optional, at best. (S. Axmaker)