High Noon (1952)

A lot of people dreamed of being a cowboy at one time or another. Most of my friends say that Back to the Future III is their favorite, and I think it is a product of this desire. I've never really wanted to be a cowboy, and this is made evident in the fact that my favorite Back to the Future is part 2. The Wild West is hot, dirty, and nobody had teeth. The future is air-conditioned, clean, and safe.



For those of you that do dream of cowboys (and of their butts squeezed into Wranglers) High Noon has everything you could want: guns, booze, outlaws, and the modern L.A. skyline accidentally shown in the background.

High Noon is about Will Kane, a small town Marshall, who is retiring after marrying his Quaker wife. As he is turning in his star the town receives word that an outlaw arrested by Kane is returning and is bent on revenge. Things are guaranteed to get out of hand, but Kane must face this outlaw, and his gang, alone because the townsfolk are a bunch of cowards.

The title High Noon sounds like it belongs to an epic cowboy shootout movie, but that is not the case. There was very little shooting at all. I'm not going to say that the movie was boring, but it certainly wasn't nail-biting. If you ignore the fact that an hour of this movie is a lot of talking while Will Kane is searching for special deputies, and then the last half hour is actual fighting, then you could call the movie exciting. On top of that, if you ignore the fact that the fight scenes look like something straight out of the Batman T.V. show

then the movie gets to be pretty dang awesome. All in all it's a semi-decent cowboy movie, but not my style. I'd rather see flying cars.

The bottom line:
Rating: 3.5
Would I own it? Not before I own 3:10 to Yuma (the remake with Christian Bale)
Would I recommend it? Only to folks wearing spurs.