Plantiana Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Brightlyme i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

Holstra Boring, long, and too preachy.

Sammy-Jo Cervantes There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

adrian-43767 THE PROUD ONES strikes me a Western hovering just above B rating because it has so many supporting actors of the highest quality. Robert Ryan, the lead, was supporting actor in about 80% of his movies, Walter Brennan is the only actor ever to win 3 Best Supporting Actor Oscars, Virginia Mayo never really achieved lead star status, Jeffrey Hunter was groomed to become a big actor but apparently he did not perform convincingly enough in this very movie, and his career slid downward thereafter. Robert Middleton (Honest John) and Arthur O'Connell were also well known supporting players.The screenplay and direction are also rather on the B side of things. Photography is competent enough.It is Ryan's quietly effective performance that holds the film together, helped by an uncharacteristically un-boisterous Brennan and a smilingly menacing Middleton.Hunter is particularly poor, especially in the target practice sequence where he thinks of shooting Ryan in the back, after apparently reconciling himself with the idea that Ryan is a worthy man; and even accepting the job the latter offered him. The ending seems too convenient for words. I give THE PROUD ONES a very generous 7/10 because I love Westerns, and have always enjoyed watching Ryan.

sol- An ageing sheriff attempts to run a crooked gambling syndicate out of town but has to contend with public mistrust given his reputation as 'trigger happy' in this Old West drama starring Robert Ryan. While he looks old enough to be the father of love interest Virginia Mayo, Ryan delivers a very human performance here as he laments the fact that his trigger happy reputation is based only on his word against others and as he states confidently that his "ambition is to be oldest living marshal west of Kansas City". The film features some dialogue that simply simmers with wit too; early on, Ryan is told that "pride can kill a man faster than a bullet", to which he quickly responds "so can overconfidence". The conclusion of the movie feels a bit too neat and tidy for credibility, but this is a pretty solid movie overall with Mayo's underwritten, thankless role probably the biggest detractor; it is either that, or the repetitive whistling music at key dramatic parts. When the film focuses on Ryan though and the trust he tries to build with Jeffrey Hunter, it is top tier stuff with the highlight of the film being an incredibly intense scene in which they practise shooting. Apparently, this was one of Akira Kurosawa's favourite movies. It seems an unusual choice, but with such excellent character drama, it is certainly more notable than the average western out there.

Spikeopath The Proud Ones is directed by Robert D. Webb and adapted to screenplay by Edmund H. North and Joseph Petracca from the Verne Athanas novel. It stars Robert Ryan, Jeffrey Hunter, Virginia Mayo, Robert Middleton, Walter Brennan, Arthur O'Connell, Ken Clark and Rodolfo Acosta. A De Luxe Color/Cinemascope production, with music by Lionel Newman and cinematography by Lucien Ballard. Flat Rock, Kansas, and the coming of the railroad and the trail herds has the town eagerly planning for prosperity. Cass Silver (Ryan), the no nonsense marshal of Flat Rock is expecting trouble, and he gets it… Splendidly mounted Oater that features a strong cast and colourful Scope photography by one of the masters of his craft. The story is hardly breaking new ground, the narrative clearly harks to more well known genre pieces of the 50s, though the oedipal theme that runs throughout adds an extra dimension. In trying to steer the pic away from formulaic over drive, the makers insert an affliction on our tough old boy marshal, namely he is suffering bouts of dizziness and blindness, which naturally couldn't have arrived at a more inopportune moment since Cass Silver has pretty much got to tackle the town's bad eggs on his own. Or has he? Enter Hunter's angry young man, gunning for Cass because he killed his outlaw father, allegedly in cold blood. And this is where we get oedipal from, and it adds some meat to the formula skeleton. This is very good Western film making, plenty of machismo fuelled set-pieces, plenty of brooding and yearning, and it all builds to a ripper of a climax. There's few surprises in store, and Mayo and Brennan are sadly wasted, but this deserves to be better known and more importantly, it deserves to be thought of better than merely being a High Noon clone. Besides which, Robert Ryan is ace, no matter his age he always delivers grace and grizzle in equal measure. 7.5/10

zardoz-13 "Beneath the 12-Mile Reef" director Robert D. Webb's western shoot'em up "The Proud Ones" is a solid, well-made, and highly underrated oater that stars Robert Ryan as a leathery tough town marshal, Jeffrey Hunter as an indecisive cowhand, and Virginia Mayo as Ryan's spitfire girlfriend. "The Proud Ones" anticipated later films such as Anthony Mann's "The Tin Star" (1957), Sam Fuller's "Forty Guns," Sergio Corbucci's "Minnesota Clay" (1965), Don Siegel's "Death of a Gunfighter" (1969), and Fernando Baldi's "Blindman" (1971). Webb doesn't waste a moment in this tightly helmed western drama that deals with a familiar theme in most oaters: an older man takes a younger one under his tutelage and shows him the ropes about how to survive as a lawman and how to handle a six-gun. Predictably, the younger man doesn't trust the older man and that generates half of the drama in "The Proud Ones." Clocking in at a minimal 94-minutes, this Twentieth Century Fox sagebrusher penned by Academy Award winner Edmund H. North of "Patton" and "Guns of the Timberlands" scenarist Joseph Petracca slights the villain and the heroine. Robert Middleton is a worthwhile villain and he poses a clear and present danger to our hero, but we don't get nearly enough scenes where he connives against the protagonist. In other words, Middleton doesn't make near enough an impression. Meantime, Virginia Mayo doesn't garner enough screen time either as our hero's headstrong girlfriend. Composer Lionel Newman contributes a richly atmospheric orchestral soundtrack that is distinguished by a pre-Ennio Morricone whistling theme. Veteran western lenser Lucian Ballard adds to the credibility with his artful widescreen compositions that give this western a quiet dignity. The supporting cast is fleshed out by many familiar faces, among them Walter Brennan in a pre-"Rio Bravo" role as a wise old deputy; Arthur O'Connell as a nervous, expectant father, Whit Bissell as a yellow livered townsperson, Ken Clark and Rudolfo Acosta as murderous killers; Edward Platt as the town doctor, George Mathews and I. Stanford Jolly as crooked card dealers.Basically, a hard-as-nails Kansas town marshal, Cass Silver (Robert Ryan of "Flying Leathernecks"), has to keep a town tamed after his old nemesis 'Honest John' Barrett (Robert Middleton of "The Law and Jake Wade") opens a saloon/gambling house and imports a couple of trigger-happy gunslingers to raise Cass' blood pressure. The first of the cattle herds are showing up in town and the merchants are taking advantage of their future customers by raising prices on everything, including haircuts. Complications arise when Cass has to blast one of Barrett's quick-tempered men in a saloon gunfight and a bullet nicks him on the left temple so that his vision blurs at the worst moments. Meanwhile, if blurry sight is enough for our clench-jawed hero to contend with, a cowpoke, Thad Anderson (Jeffrey Hunter of "The Searchers"), rides into town with a cattle herd and keeps two guns buckled across his hips. It seems that Anderson's no-good father worked as a hired gun for Barrett in another town and Silver had to plug him. Barrett has generated a persuasive rumor that Silver gunned down Anderson' father in cold blood and Anderson wants to know the truth.Jeffrey Hunter has the plum role as Anderson, largely because he hasn't made up his mind which side of the law that he intends to stay on. Never quite completely until the end of the action does Anderson trust Cass Silver. It is a testimony to Robert Ryan's ability as a leading man and a character actor that he comes off as a marshal who is prepared to do things that most lawmen wouldn't do. During a street showdown, he blasts a gunmen who appeared to be unarmed but had concealed a derringer in his jacket. Later, Anderson pulls the same stunt, shooting down a man at a saloon bar who appeared to all intensive purposes to be unarmed. These two scenes raise "The Proud Ones" above average. "The Proud Ones" isn't one of those westerns with unrealistic expectations. The suspicion on behalf of the townspeople that Cass Silver might be a mite unhinged in his behavior foreshadows Siegel's later western "Death of a Gunfighter." The big gundown in a barn at the end bristles with thrills, too, as Silver confronts his Achilles' heel when his sight goes bad, he loses his revolver, and he must depend on Anderson. "The Proud Ones" is an unheralded western that deserves more positive critical recognition.