This black comedy western is directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and star Kirk Douglas and Henry Fonda. Paris Pitman Jr is a bespectacled smooth talking con man and a murderer. He is a very evil man with no morals and soft feelings within him. But being a cool operator he is able to charm his way out of difficult situations and win the trust of those around him.
Pitman and his gang loot the house of a wealthy rancher, Lomax and make away with half a million dollars. But one by one the gang members are shot by the police and the surviving lone marauder is killed by Pitman himself to prevent him from claiming a share on the booty. Pitman escapes and enters a brothel. He ties the money up and drops it in a rattlers pit.
He enters the brothel, is recognized by Lomax and is subsequently arrested and sentenced to a prison Arizona. The prison is in the middle of a desert and a hard life awaits Pitman. But he tries to bribe Warden LeGoff to help him escape. His plans go awry when the warden is killed by one of the inmates and his place is taken up by an upright officer called Lopeman. Lopeman is an idealist who is in favor of prison and judicial reform. He believes in reforming the criminals and presents a slew of measures to improve the conditions in the prison.

Pitman is enraged at first at his failure, but soon wins the trust of Lopeman. Lopeman puts him in charge of the building of a new prison dining room. Soon he starts manipulating others to formulate a plan for escaping from the prison. He forms a gang of his own which includes Missouri Kid, Whinner and Macnutt (a gay con artist couple), Floyd moon, Michael Blodgett, a kid on death row and Ah Ping, a silent Chinese. All of them slowly feel the power of Pitman Jr and plot an escape. They plan to start a riot during the inspection day by the governor.
Soon the plot is successful, with full scale rioting taking place, and as a result, all of them escape from prison. But Pitman the backstabber that he is, kills every one. Lopeman sheds all his idealisms and vow to bring back Pitman dead or alive. But fate has another things in store for the outlaw. As Pitman takes out the loot from the Rattlers nest he is bitten by one of them.
This is the most cynical movie I have ever seen. There is no good vs evil fights with good triumphant over the bad. This is the story of a bad man who corrupts and manipulates his way out to meet the just desserts by the quirk of fate. Tough movie to watch on.

This movie was released in 1968, and has Henry Fonda and James Stewart essaying the leading roles. The leading pair are cast as chief antagonist’s and are pitted in a good Vs bad gun battle. As the story begins, Johnny Cobb is a mild mannered farmer who acts as a sheriff to a gentle community of Fire creek. He is a family man with his wife Henrietta in the family way. He moves around with a tin badge hammered out by his kids which spells “Sheraf” instead of sheriff. He is pretty embarrassed by these shows of affection.
In to this idyllic town ride the thugs, Larkin, Drew, Norman, Earl and Willard. They are raging psychopaths who shoots up the town. The ring leader Larkin is wounded and has to lie low to get well. He is disgusted with the behavior of his gang but does little to stop them. Larkin is ministered by Evelyn a kindly land lady who fearlessly speaks about the atrocities committed by the hoodlums.
John Cobb does his best to keep peace within the town. Soon the gang members disrupt church services, and beat up the towns people. Things get ugly when Meli, an Indian women is raped by the gang member. Albert a stable boy who witness this gruesome sight, inadvertently kills him. Cobb locks up Albert to put him on trial. But as he leaves town to visit his pregnant wife the gang forcibly enter the prison and lynches Albert. Then the gang tries to take over the town completely.

This cowardly act enrages the sheriff who try to arrest the perpetrators. Soon a gun battle ensues in which the sheriff takes the lone stand. He shoots Drew, Earl, Norman and Willard. Larkin wounds the sheriff but still he manages to kill Larkin. Soon the whole town is energized and they fight the thugs out.
The movie is supposed to be thriller, but is little too long. This is one of the few films which Fonda plays the antagonist and has worked with his real life buddy James Stewart.

This movie was adapted from a book by Maxwell Anderson, “The True story of Christopher, Emmanuel Balestrero” and is based on a true life incident.
It deals with a couple who fight for justice when the husband is convicted as a result of a mistaken identity. Manny Balestrero, a musician in a night club and his wife Rose live a hand and mouth existence. He tries to borrow money against Rose’s insurance for some dental work which needs to be done. While he is at he insurance office, the clerk notices that he resembles the armed robber who had robbed the office. He calls in the police and soon the witnesses are marched in who swear to have seen him robing the office. Manny tries to prove his innocence, but fails. Even in his handwriting sample, in his nervousness, he misspells the same words that the robber himself had mis-spelt. Soon Manny is taken in to custody and the trial begins.
The couple hire Frank O’Connor as the defense attorney who builds up the case in their favor. He argues that Manny and Rose were on a vacation during the first robbery. But the 3 witnesses who had seen them during the vacation had died and this alibi also fails to impress. During the second robbery Manny had a swollen jaw which would have been easily noticeable by the insurance agency employee.

Rose is unable to bear the strain of this ordeal and soon buckles under pressure. She is confined to the sanitarium and is treated for depression. During the trial a bored Juror passes a remark which makes the judge to declare a mistrial. Manny is forced to await another trial in prison. As luck could have it the real robber is arrested and Manny is set free. He reaches Rose with the happy news but finds her apathetic. Soon Rose is cured and the family moves to Florida.
This movie was based on a true life story and is the last movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock for Warner bros. After this he made pictures only for Paramount. This movie is said to have been the only true story in Hitchcock’s entire body of work. He is said to have hated the police and this sentiment is amply reflected in this movie. Hitchcock even did a cameo as the story teller in the movie and this is the only time he has appeared in any one of his pictures. He even cast the real Balesstrero witnesses in small parts for the movie. The real life Frank O’Connor is a New York Senator who rises to a appellate Judge.
The wrong man failed to impress at the box office, but is considered a classic. This movie has significant influence on many directors, and was influenced in making of the 2006 movie Lucky Number Slevin.

The late 60′s and early 70′s was the time when Martin Scrocese was making his initial movies, the time when he started to develop a reputation. It was a lesson for the young director, imparted by producer Roger Corman, who had helped other directors such as Coppola and James Cameron to also start their careers. Corman used to be able to guide directors to make movies that cost very little movies, and the same was true of this movie, Boxcar Bertha, which was made with a very low amount of 600,000 (a very low amount of money for a movie), and was a good lesson for Martin Scorcese. The movie is apparently based on a book called ‘Sister of the Road’, a biography of Bertha Thomson, who went onto to do train robbery at a time of the 1930′s (written by Dr. Ben L. Reitman). However, the movie and the book were certainly different in terms of the story; with the movie being made to capitalize on the ongoing craze for movies in the ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ style. The movie, being depicted in the American South of the 1930′s, you get a look at the prevalent issues related to the situation regarding racial differences, as well as issues related to gender.

The movie has as the main characters, Bertha Thompson (played by Barbara Hershey) and “Big” Bill Shelly (played by David Carradine). Bertha is a typical character of the depression era, an orphan, who was also a robber, being a typically charming woman, accompanied by 3 other members of her team, a union organizer (Bill), a con man from New York (Barry Primus) and a mechanic fond of the blues (Bernie Casey). Even though the movie is set in the 30′s, you get a feel for the early 70′s environment in the movie, with characters tending to adventurous, free spirited and criminal, but not more so than the tie-striped bankers and lawyers. The movie was worth watching because of the effort put in by Martin Scorsese, and these efforts are visible in the movie.