High Noon

1952

Directed by Fred Zinnemann

Netflix says… Retiring Marshal Will Kane insists on defending his town from a gang of hooligans who are due on the noon train–but he faces the task alone as the cowardly townspeople flee like rats from a sinking ship.

You don’t see the word “hooligans” enough these days. We should start bringing it back.

Did you know this movie is not a comedy in the style of Cheech & Chong or Pineapple Express? Just kidding… I knew it was a western. Calm yourselves.

Kids, this movie kind of made me angry. The people in this thing are ridiculous. All of them. Not just the townspeople. Kane was kind of stupid and selfish and prideful, too. One of the townsfolk had a good point in saying that if Kane would just leave town, odds were the bad guy coming in on the noon train would leave them all alone. Then again, I get Kane’s point of view, figuring that wasn’t a risk worth taking. What if he’d left town and this guy just breezed in to pillage, plunder, and otherwise pilfer his weaselly black guts out.

I wasn’t looking forward to this one. I’m pretty sure I never look forward to the westerns. On my list of genres I love, westerns rank somewhere near the bottom with movies about Vietnam. It wasn’t a bad movie. How can a movie with Grace Kelly be bad? But, uh, isn’t Gary Cooper just a little too old to be marrying Grace Kelly? At the start of the marriage ceremony near the beginning of the movie, I thought he was her dad, giving the bride away. But, I guess age is a number. So, I guess, good for you Marshal…