Seven Men From Now (1956)

An ex-lawman (Randolph Scott) is determined to track down the seven men who robbed a Wells Fargo freight station of $20,000. But it's not the money that drives him. His wife was killed in the holdup and he wants vengeance. Directed by Budd Boetticher, this was the first of the wonderful seven westerns he made in collaboration with Randolph Scott. This one sets the tone of their following films together. As an actor, Scott is a master of simplicity and understatement. What you see is what you get and Boetticher leaves the other actors like Lee Marvin as Scott's ambiguous nemesis and Walter Reed as an Easterner traveling with his wife (Gail Russell) to California to provide a duality to their characterizations. You're never sure till the end if Marvin is a good bad guy, a bad good guy or just plain bad and Reed proves to be more than the "half a man" (as Marvin calls him) we take him for. The women's roles in the Boetticher westerns usually aren't very interesting but Gail Russell's wife is one of the rare ones that is. The attraction between her and Scott is obvious but Boetticher knows that Scott's character would never take another man's wife. With Stuart Whitman, John Larkin, Donald Barry and Pamela Duncan.