BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

FrogGlace In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Ava-Grace Willis Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Robert J. Maxwell This Western was directed by Robert Wise and has a fine, experienced cast. The story is a familiar one. One old chum (Preston) sends for another old chum (Mitchum) to offer him a job. The problem is that, though a juxtaposition of circumstance, it's a lousy job, even though it would pay well. Mitchum is supposed to help Preston and his gang of low lifes scam the local farmers, like Walter Brennan, and an honest rancher, Tom Tully, out of his cattle. The means are too complicated to bother explaining.It must be one of the least glamorous Westerns ever filmed. The opening shots are of Mitchum alone on horseback, riding over some dark hills in the middle of a torrent. He's drenched and uncomfortable. Few people in the story look comfortable. It's cold and turns snowy. The men are bundled up in winter clothing and wear tall ugly cowboy hats. They tend to wear chaps, which are really fit only for stylization, like Robert Duval's woolly chaps in the original "True Grit." In a minor role, Charles McGraw lumbers around in what looks like a bear costume, growling his observations.The women look delicate though. Barbara Bel Geddes is attractive and ends her lines with the terminal contours of an upper-class school girl from Rosemary Hall. Phyllis Thaxter, I think, is miscast as Preston's naive girl friend. She's purity personified and it's hard to swallow her attraction to a lying, mustachioed villain like Preston. Lust is not exactly her forte.Many of the scenes take place at night and everything looks depressing. It captures the atmosphere all right but the atmosphere is something from Dante's Purgatorio.In the course of the tale, Mitchum changes his mind, sides with the good guys, has a brutal fist fight with Preston, finally has a shoot out with the villains, and ascends Mount Purgatory to the peaceful summit, hand in hand with Bel Geddes.There's a lot of energy on screen but little of it looks original. Mitchum is a bit plump and sleepier than in some of his other work. But it must be said that after that unsparing, barbaric fight in the bar room, Mitchum and the make up department, allowed him to look like hell, his long hair hanging in strands over his ears, sweating and panting as the usual heroes never do. There are also some impressive shots of a pursuit through the snow. All of it might have been better done in color.

utgard14 Cowboy Robert Mitchum comes to help old friend Robert Preston, only to find himself in the middle of a war between Preston and rancher Tom Tully. He soon realizes his buddy might not be the good guy in this particular fight. Excellent shadowy western from director Robert Wise with touches of film noir. Mitchum is solid. Preston makes an interesting villain. Nice support that includes Walter Brennan, Charles McGraw, Frank Faylen, and Phyllis Thaxter. Barbara Bel Geddes plays Mitchum's love interest. The abrupt change in her character's personality is one of the film's weaker points. She starts out as hotheaded tomboy then, without explanation, turns into a sweet, sympathetic lady. Fistfight in a darkened bar between Mitchum and Preston is a highlight. Western fans will enjoy this one a lot.

LeonLouisRicci One of the best Westerns is unfortunately little known outside Film-Noir devotees and Robert Mitchum Fans. It is a darkly lit antithesis to most familiar Westerns of broad sun drenched landscapes and other clichés of the Genre. A brooding Character Study that anticipated the Mann/Boetticher personal Films of the 1950's.This is one of the very few Westerns that can be placed in the Film-Noir Category without dissent. From the conflicted and sensitive Anti-Hero to the moody, gloomy shadows that drape almost every Scene, to the brutal and very violent brawl that takes place in a dingy Commissary, to the changing attitudes of the Players, this is definitely a Noir without apology.The fine Acting, Cinematography, and Direction makes this stand out as a thoughtful, complex situation of Range Wars and Social alignments. A unique Movie that is mounted in a claustrophobic frame that goes against the grain of its setting. A sharply focused, but mysterious environment with Drifters and Cowgirls equally important to the Story.

imogensara_smith The concept of the "noir western" is unthinkable without Robert Mitchum. Mitchum, who started his career as a heavy in B westerns and went on to be hailed as the "soul of film noir" for his world-weary cynicism and cool, doomed aura, defined the hybrid genre in 1947 with PURSUED, then followed with BLOOD ON THE MOON. The plot is essential noir: a man down on his luck is summoned by an old partner and cut in on a big deal; when he finds out that the deal is crooked and his friend is an irredeemable louse, he has to decide whether to accept his slide into corruption or fight to maintain his honor. The scheme just happens to involve cheating a man out of his cattle herd instead of some urban racket. The cinematography is literal noir; at least half the scenes take place at night, in a murk that rather obviously symbolizes the difficulty of seeing anyone's true nature. None of the western clichés are here: there are no rowdy dance-halls or rip-snorting brawls or comical drunks, no steely sheriffs or white-hatted good guys. The mood is somber, tense and ambiguous, but the film does satisfy the requirements for a western: there are cattle stampedes, a savage fight, a gun battle and beautiful sweeping landscapes, including stunning scenes in a snow-bound pass, the white drifts sliced by the tracks of men and horses. All of the performances are restrained and natural. Barbara Bel Geddes and Phyllis Thaxter, as the daughters of the cattle baron targeted by the scheme, both avoid the glossy glamour that so often makes actresses look out of place in westerns. Bel Geddes is appealingly fresh, and does a good job with a character who starts out as a hostile spitfire in pants (she and Mitchum "meet cute" by shooting at each other) and then morphs into a gentle healer in a dress. Robert Preston is perfect as Riling, a smirking cad with an oily face and a plaid jacket; his former partner Jim Garry (Mitchum) sums him up with the classic line, "I've seen dogs that wouldn't claim you for a son." Walter Brennan adds seasoning as usual, this time poignant rather than comic. Mitchum makes a beautiful cowboy with his long hair and elegantly rugged attire, at once authentic (on seeing Mitch in costume Walter Brennan reportedly declared, "That is the goddamnedest realest cowboy I've ever seen!") and romantic. In one scene he confronts a gunman on a wide, dusty street and walks towards him—that's all he has to do, just walk towards him and the guy knows he's outclassed. (Mitchum's panther walk is one of the glories of cinema—I would love to watch a whole movie of nothing but Mitchum walking.) I don't think Jim Garry smiles once (though he comes close in a gentle scene where the heroine, tending to his injured hand, asks about his fight with Riling, and he answers, "It was a pleasure.") He conveys a profound inchoate sadness, but as always he uses dry humor to keep emotion at bay. He's contained, laconic, defended. Not merely stoic, he's strangely passive, willing to let things go; his strength is tinged with melancholy because he can "take it," but he also feels it. Lee Marvin (Mitchum's one-time co-star) said it well: "The beauty of that man. He's so still. He's moving. And yet he's not moving." Mitchum is mesmerizing because you sense so much going on behind the cool, impassive facade. It's partly his film-style acting, which happens under the surface, not on the surface. But under-acting can't fully account for his mystery. There's something fundamentally inaccessible, unknowable about Mitchum's characters, and this is what makes them so real. You never feel they are underwritten or inconsistent; instead you feel he's a whole and complex person who can never be fully explained. Despite his much publicized contempt for most of his work, Mitchum brings this tremendous gift to the slightest and shallowest of movies. BLOOD ON THE MOON, however, is worthy of him.