Comanche Station

The last of the marvellous Westerns partnering Boetticher and Scott, beautifully scripted by Burt Kennedy and performed by a solid cast. Scott's the obsessive man, hunting these last ten years for a wife kidnapped by Comanches, who rescues instead another woman, only to find himself up against Akins and his reward-hungry sidekicks as he ferries her back to civilisation. With characters doomed from the start, it's a bleakly pessimistic film that gains warmth from gently ironic humour and a discreetly elegiac tone.