Wednesday, May 29, 2013

COLORADO TERRITORY (1949)

This loose retelling of HIGH SIERRA, finds Joel McCrea in the Bogart character as a criminal who's hired for a big robbery job, but troubled by his growing conscience.  Along the way to meet his new partners, he foils a stagecoach robbery and takes a liking to a old man and his beautiful daughter.  Once he arrives at the ghost town where his team is waiting for him, he finds them not to his liking and even worse is there's a woman with them.  As expected, the tension among the men grows and the robbery doesn't go as planned.  Now on the run from a bloodthirsty posse, McCrea has to make some quick decisions.

Strong cast and a great director, but for whatever reason COLORADO TERRITORY didn't do a whole lot for me.  It was an entertaining watch, but I felt like I'd already seen all of this before...probably because I did in HIGH SIERRA!  Also, I didn't care for seeing McCrea as a bad guy.  I understand that he was having a change of heart, but he's still a criminal and a killer.

Worth watching, but unfortunately it doesn't bring anything new to the table.

Original - High Sierra (1941)
Remake 2 - I Died a Thousand Times (1955)