Ride Lonesome

Former sheriff Ben Brigade is now travelling the country as a bounty hunter. He has just caught the murderer Billy John and is about to bring him to Santa Cruz when two small-time crooks turn up who are also after Billy, but for different reasons. But Ben is pursuing a very specific goal with his catch, which is connected to the murder of his wife many years ago and seems to be fulfilled on a gallows tree outside the town ... The penultimate western in the seven-part ‘Ranown’ cycle by Budd Boetticher and Randolph Scott is also the first in Cinemascope. However, the possibilities of widescreen contradict the reduction to the essentials: pure, archetypal cinema that deals with the price of revenge as well as the longing for redemption. (Florian Widegger)