Coming two years after The Hustler, this underrated Western sees a prime-time Paul Newman give a performance to match his `Fast' Eddie Felson.
Ol' Blue Eyes plays the eponymous anti-hero, a mean-spirited, womanising sonofabitch who can't get enough of the sauce. Melvyn Douglas is his moralising pa, a Texan cattle-herder who faces ruin after an outbreak of foot-and-mouth.
Playing like a trad Western emulsified in acid, Martin Ritt's saddle-saga echoes, among others, Red River and Shane, father and son locking horns as Hud's hero-worshipping nephew (Brandon De Wilde) looks on. The big picture, meanwhile, captures the taming of the West, the frontier's free-rangers shuffling towards graves dug by politicians. Hard as flint but chiselled from the heart.
DVD Extras:
None.
