The Ox-Bow Incident

If it hadn’t been for the IMDb Top 250 list, I doubt I would have heard of this movie. It seems to have gotten lost in time somehow, perhaps because it’s not quite a western, not quite a noir. But believe me, it’s excellent.

Two men come to a town where news are spreading that a local farmer has been murderered and his cattle has been stolen. A posse is quickly rounded up, and it rides out to find the murderers and dispense their own kind of justice.

In some respects, this bears a striking resemblance to 12 Angry Men — another movie with Henry Fonda (which just so happens to be one of my all-time favourites). In that, as in this, Fonda plays an everyman with a strong moral compass, pressed by outside forces to agree on sentencing someone to death without giving the accused a fair chance. And Fonda does it so well. He’s a regular guy, and sincere throughout. I love the guy; I could watch him forever.

Anyway, the posse find the presumed murderers pretty quickly, and then they start bickering over whether to kill them or give them a fair trial. Mob mentality is very skillfully portrayed here, and the tension and doubt is mounting until the inevitable end.

Usually, I gripe that movies run too long. This, however, could have done with a longer running time. It clocks in at just 70 minutes, and I would have loved to have seen more.

Overall, this was a very good movie, a nice surprise. With a strong cast and a superb (if not too surprising) ending, this is well worth your time.