Directed by Anthony Mann. Written by Sam Rolfe and Harold Jack Bloom.
A rancher learns there’s more than one way to die in Anthony Mann’s The Naked Spur as he takes on bounty hunting to finance his future, failing to read the fine print: you pay with your decency to live this way.
James Stewart injects some real nerve into his already stellar filmography as Howard Kemp, a man who’s trying to regain what was taken from him. A soldier for the Union, he made a promise to his sweetheart to return to her before he left for the war, entrusting her with his farm. Upon his return, he finds out she sold it all, and ran off with another man. Bad break.
It’s therefore no surprise there’s little kindness left in Howard as we pick up with him on a criminal’s trail. Ben Vandergroat (Robert Ryan) has a $5,000 bounty on his head, and while it’s a dirty business catching crooks, it’s Howard’s only hope in buying a ranch and realizing the future he imagined for himself. To nab Ryan, he enlists the help of a gruff prospector (Millard Mitchell) and a newly released soldier (Ralph Meeker) whom the army found to be “morally unstable” – only the best for this fine line of work!
Now with Ryan in custody begins the long trip back to Kansas where he is to hang, only Howard’s new comrades each want their cut of the $5,000. Also part of the crew is Lina, played by Janet Leigh. She’s a young woman who’s taken up with Ben and intends to follow him back to Kansas and plead his case. Howard has his work cut out managing both his prisoner and his partners.
It makes for a tense situation and tests of character as Vandergroat does his best to persuade one of the three men to backstab the other two, and for Kemp, it’s a test of how far he’ll go, and how much of his old, trusting self he’ll lose to get what he wants. In Lina, Howard is reminded of the companionship he thought he had, exacerbating matters.
As far as Westerns go, James Stewart’s not famous for conflicted heroes, let alone anti-heroes, but he’s right at home as Horward. A rancher whose violent past was state-sponsored, we don’t have to see him as a gunman, and the desperation that motivates Howard gives Stewart plenty to work with. He’s curt, rude to the point of aggression, but try as he might to be the cutthroat he needs to be, Stewart knows how to betray the decency that still breathes within. It’s a tellingly successful contrast to Bend of the River, another Mann/Stewart collaboration released a year earlier, where Stewart’s an ex-bad guy trying to go straight. That kind of posturing just isn’t in Stewart’s wheelhouse, and a comparison could be Sylvester Stallone playing an accountant. The mind refuses to accept it.
There’s also some treats for the genre-aficionados, as Robert Ryan is a cheeky delight as Vandergroat, who’s every bit the unscrupulous greaseball you’d expect to have a hefty bounty on them and somehow stay on the loose. Constantly wearing a shit-eating grin, he’s some kind of chaps-wearing demon trickster. The film also boasts a thrilling sequence involving numerous rock slides, but don’t be fooled, The Naked Spur focuses on the tension between its characters and guns stay holstered for the most part.
James Stewart is the real draw, as he deepens his catalog in communicating the genuine trauma of dashed dreams and the loss of an imagined life, giving us a shining example of a Western character study where morality is under siege but the outcome isn’t set in stone as Howard works out what kind of man he wants to be.
Mikkel Frederiksen 