Lawman

[steveno]

it has been a long time since I seen this western with a lot of big name stars along with Burt Lancaster. kind of brutal and gritty. it was on the Retro cable channel this morning.

Lawman (film - Wikipedia)

 

[rockquarry]

LAWMAN is certainly worth seeing. Probably a very underrated western, made years after westerns with big name stars were produced. Hard to go wrong with most Burt Lancaster movies anyway. Same for Lee J. Cobb.

Also, the late '60s to early '70s was a time when a lot of duds were passed off as watchable movies.

 

[sophie]

I watch Lawman just about everytime it is on the western channel or sony channel. Good show with lots of good actors. Right up my alley.

 

[Watchdog]

Burt Lancaster made two westerns that were both released in 1971...Lawman and Valdez Is Coming.

Both were excellent westerns. In both of them, he played men who were more or less obsessed with getting the bad guys...whether it was for vengeance or for the law.

Lawman was the darker of the two films. He played Marshal Jared Maddox as an almost psychotic killer with a badge. The film didn't start out as one of those eye-for-an-eye things, but it sort of ended up going down that road far as I'm concerned.

Valdez Is Coming is sort of a vengeance-pursuit film. It's based on the Elmore Leonard novel of the same name. Bob Valdez uses a Sharps rifle (and a shooting stick!) as one of his tools. He likes sawed off shotguns, too. Some sources give 1970 as the release year for this film. It's a beautifully photographed film.

 

[rockquarry]

Just an opinion... "Valdez" was better than most westerns made during that era and could be accurately called a good movie, but it was quite secondary to "Lawman".

 

[sigp220.45]

Thanks for the heads-up. I just watched it.

Surprisingly brutal, with Technicolor blood and exit wounds. The guns were mostly right, only a couple of Winchester 92s showing up in 1887. Burt carried a Winchester 73 rifle (not a carbine).

They did something rarely done in westerns - they shot each other’s horses. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Hollywood western where the big star smacks a guy square in the nads with his pistol, either. The final shootout was a doozy, with a couple of unexpected deaths.

The early 70s were a strange time for westerns. Soldier Blue and Little Big Man came out in 1970 and hit the reset button on blood and gore.

Thanks again.

 

[500SNW]

Thanks for pointing out this film. I'm big on Westerns and I don't recall ever seeing it, but it sounds worth checking out. It doesn't surprise me that it is brutal and gritty....since Michael Winner (of Death Wish fame) directed it.

 

[cpt-t]

The movie ((( LAWMAN ))) is my favorite western movie. And Burt Lancaster is one of my favorite movie actors. Also like ((( Valdez is Coming ))) starring Burt Lancaster very much as well.
ken

 

[Wyatt Burp]

I saw both Lawman and Valdez at the show when I was a kid. They left quite an impression. When Burt Lancaster shot Albert Salmi in Lawman, blood shot out of his chest like a water hose. Me and my friends were stunned. I think we saw it three times. As mentioned, both films were brutal, Lawman particularly. The Wild Bunch paved the way for bloodshed, but I think theses two films were also influenced by the the spaghetti westerns. An old ivory/nickel S&W Russian Model (I think) made a cameo in Lawman.

 

[Watchdog]

The Wild Bunch paved the way for bloodshed...

The Wild Bunch paved the way for quite a few things in films, and not just in westerns.