Good start, but then it gets ruined

Awesome Movie

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Both are films made by Robert Ryan in the early 50's and they would make a terrific double feature.A comparison of the two movies is also interesting The Racket was done for Howard Hughes' RKO studio. Horizons West was a Universal picture. Both had famous directors, John Cromwell, (supplemented by several others, including Nicholas Ray) and Bud Boetticher. The Rackett is a re-working of a successful play and movie from the 1920's with a screenplay by WR Burnett, (High Sierra among others). Horizons West is done by Louis Stevens, a veteran writer of movie westerns, (this appears to be his best work). Ryan is the main "bad guy" in both movies but in each case, he's much more complex than that. His Nick Scanlon in The racket is violent and intimidating, almost reptilian. He's fully formed as a heavy from the moment we meet him. But we find out he either grew up with or went to school with Robert Mitchum's police Captain: in the grand tradition, they came from the same background but went in different directions. We also learn that Ryan sent his now troublesome younger brother to college to keep him out of the rackets. He clearly doesn't think much of the crooked politicians and new "corporate" crooks that are running things. And in the end, his revenge is to "tell the voters to vote for the honest politicians". Underneath the violence, he has a certain integrity. Something- we never learn what turned him against society while Mitchum remained well-adjusted and on the right side of the law. In Horzions West, Ryan starts out being a good guy, or at least not a bad guy yet. He comes home from the Civil War with his brother, (Rock Hudson), and a loyal friend named "Tiny", (James Arness). As they arrive in Texas, they have a conversation about the future. Arness wants to raise his family. Hudson wants to work the family ranch, just like before. Ryan shows a harder edge. He wants to make it big. They arrive in town, (Austin) to see that Yankees carpetbaggers have made it big. Ryan ties to associate with them but gets on the wrong side of Burr in poker game and is on the outside looking in. He organizes a band of out-of-work soldiers and deserters into a cattle rustling operation and establishes connections with a Mexican military officer who is running a crooked operation across the border. Eventually he gets even with Burr, who is killed. And has an affair with Burr's pretty young wife, (Julie Adams). In the beginning our sympathy is with him but as he grows more and more powerful, he becomes more ambitious and ruthless, which makes him too many enemies and causes his eventual downfall. In Horizons West, Hudson becomes the town sheriff and has to take on his brother, thus paralleling the Ryan-Mitchum relationship in The Racket. In that film, Ryan killed a policeman played by William Tallman, who became famous as Hamilton Burgers on Perry mason. In Horizons West, he kills Hudson's deputy, who is played by Jim Arness, soon to be famous as Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke. William Conrad, radio's Matt Dillon, appears as a corrupt policeman in The Racket. That film has two actors from Perry mason, the other being Ray Collins, who played Lt. Tragg. Horizon's West has two actors form Gunsmoke, with Dennis Weaver playing a very un-Chester-like gunman. Both films have a heavy dose of corrupt public officials. Both of them have a major movie star to face off against Ryan, although Rock Hudson was early in his career and never became the dramatic force Mitchum was. But Ryan dominates every scene he's in, no matter who is in it with him.

After the American Civil War, the brothers Dan (Robert Ryan) and Neil Hammond (Rock Hudson) returns to their father's ranch H Circle in Austin, Texas with their friend Tiny (James Arness). The greedy Dan does not adapt to ranching again and has the intention of raising a fortune of his own. He borrows one thousand dollars from a friend and play cards with the wealthy Cord Hardin (Raymond Bur). However he loses five thousand dollars and Hardin humiliates Dan. He recruits dangerous deserters and other scum to form a gang, and together they steal the cattle of Cord and other ranchers. Dan raises a large amount and returns to Austin, telling that he made a fortune in New Orleans. When Cord kidnaps Neil to interrogate about the business of his brother, Cord's wife Lorna (Julia Adams) goes to the hotel and tells to Dan what is happening in the ranch. Dan goes to Cord's ranch and kills him in self- defense. He is judged innocent and sooner he marries Lorna. But his ambition is not satisfied and Dan uses the force to raise an empire. However, his father and Neil decide to bring Dan to the court with tragic consequences."Horizons West" is a western about greedy in the Post-Civil War dividing a family of ranchers. Robert Ryan is excellent, as usual, in the role of a man that loses his values in the war and returns cruel and ambitious. Julia Adams is very beautiful, wearing wonderful costumes. There are excellent lines in the dialogs and in the end this is an entertaining film. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Império do Pavor" ("Empire of Fear")

Recently, I've been watching old movies with greater weight on the modern context. In other words, I almost completely discount the situation in which it was made, and how it was intended to be viewed. You really have to do that in defense, if you study very many of these old turkeys. This is ghastly bad: good brother, bad brother, judicial father and girls, one bad and one good. Mix in a bit of cattle rustling and Technicolor.But as an episode in history that is fascinating, it works. This is when the western was still reverberating from the John Ford model, and these sorts of things could take themselves seriously. It was before TeeVee destroyed the western in the 50s by overexposure. Here you have two of the main offenders, the two guys that would go on to anchor "Gunsmoke." Seeing them before their culpability — even before they became competent — is pretty enjoyable.But you have tow other icons as well. Rock Hudson, when he was marketed and consumed as a sex star. This was before it became known he was gay, bravely announcing his fight with AIDS. That drama created a two-brother conflict in fundamentalist America we still see. Watch him here as the good brother who fights for and stays with the family.And the other, special to me. Raymond Burr also went into TeeVee a few years later as Perry Mason. This was an important show, because it was a vast ten year experiment in conveying the mystery to screen without compromise. One can literally see the evolution where the compromise won, when the public signaled that it did not want to guess, but merely be told the answer to the riddle at the end. Here, in a shock to anyone looking backwards, he is the evil guy who is replaced by the evil brother.The sets are more hokey than usual for Universal.Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

Having acted alongside James Stewart in 'Bend of the River' and appeared in two films with Tony Curtis, Rock Hudson was certainly on his way up the ladder in his late 20's. He's a bit like Charlton Heston in the sense that he has the maturity of someone almost twice his age whilst still in his 20's.