Buchanan Rides Alone

Randolph Scott rides into a small border town, becomes innocently involved in a killing (Mexican youth of wealthy family avenges the rape of his sister), and is escorted out again at gunpoint with his life spared but his money-belt emptied. Being Scott, he naturally turns right around to recover his money, in the process stoutly righting assorted wrongs without ever really knowing what is going on as Charles Lang's script drives with admirable lucidity through a morass of enigmatic loyalties and abruptly shifting partnerships, mainly involving the frenzied efforts of the three corrupt brothers who run the town to doublecross each other for profit by alternatively hanging, ransoming or kidnapping the Mexican youth. A minor film compared to The Tall T or Ride Lonesome, maybe, but foregrounding the poker-faced sense of absurdity that lurks never far below the surface through the entire Boetticher/Scott series, it is still a marvel of economical craftsmanship.