Night Passage

Description

Product Description

When the local railroad becomes the constant target of a band of desperadoes led by the notorious Whitely Harbin (Dan Duryea), train officials recruit soft-spoken but life-hardened employee Grant McLaine (Stewart) to guard the payroll from any more robberies. Trouble is, the gang’s most skilled and lethal gunslinger, the Utica Kid (Audie Murphy), is Grant’s kid brother. Torn between the bonds of blood and his allegiance to the railroad, Grant finds himself hoping for the best but preparing for the worst as the train comes under attack from Harbin’s bandits, climaxing in an unforgettable gun battle as the brothers from opposite sides of the law meet again to settle an old score.

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Thanks to ultracrisp Technirama photography of great mountainside and river gorge locations in Colorado, Night Passage is often terrific to look at; you can almost feel the autumn sun and brisk air. This should have been another classic Western pairing James Stewart with director Anthony Mann. But after choosing the locations, cast, and crew, and directing the precredit sequence, Mann abruptly resigned. He found Borden Chase’s screenplay an “incoherent” rehash of relationships and setups from their previous films, nor was he encouraged by Stewart’s determination to play the accordion and sing. Stewart’s an ex-railroad cop who became a pariah by letting a prisoner–Audie Murphy’s “The Utica Kid”–escape. The two cross paths again in a ghost town where Dan Duryea, doing a zany version of his loony outlaw from Winchester ’73, has holed up with his gang. Replacement director James Neilson, a newcomer destined for bland Disney servitude, fosters a lot of flatfooted standing-around. –Richard T. Jameson