THE LAST WAGON (1956) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Delmer Daves
Richard Widmark, Felicia Farr, Susan Kohner,
Tommy Rettig, Stephanie Griffin, Ian McShane,
Nick Adams, James Drury, Carl Benton Reid
Richard Widmark played his share of heroes over the years, and his share of murderers. In this movie, he plays a hero who's also a murderer, or maybe it's the other way around. He's Comanche Todd, a renegade white man who spent 20 years living with the Indians and saw his Indian family killed by four white guys, all of them brothers. As the story opens, three of the brothers are dead (he killed them), and the fourth, a sheriff, is chasing Widmark down and taking him in to be hanged. Then a wagon train comes along and some Apaches attack the wagon train and there are only six survivors, and who do you suppose has the skill set required to help them all escape through the perilous Canyon of Death? That'd be the guy in the filthy buckskins chained to the wagon wheel down there at the bottom of the cliff. You know. Richard Widmark. Hero. Murderer. Both.
