Film Spotlight: Tin Star

Hickman: As long as you're wearing that badge, you got to walk up, tell ‘em to throw ‘em up, then watch which way his hands move. They go up, you got yourself a prisoner. They go down, he's dead...or you are. A decent man doesn't want to kill. But if you're going to shoot, you shoot to kill.

That’s bounty hunter, Morg Hickman [Henry Fonda] to a neophyte sheriff played by Anthony Perkins.

This Anthony Mann directed Western acts as a study in how to be aware, how to be a lawman, how to be awake, and how to be appreciative.

A tight script by Dudley Nichols and superlative direction by Anthony Mann [note the composition of each shot.] Each set-up is well considered. If we note the first shot and the last shot are framed the same as narrative bookends; it lets us know we are in the hands of an artist, a craftsman who has given loving thought to the material at hand.

Henry Fonda is low key but terrific as the loner, his B-story with a widow and her son have the stuff of true sincerity about it.

This role seems a sort of template for his 2-season run as Chief Marshal Simon Fry in the 1959-61 TV series The Deputy.

Also strong is Anthony “Norman Bates” Perkins as the young sheriff, and John McIntire as the town doc.

BTW-The young widow is played by Betsy Palmer, some may know her as Jason Voorhees mother in the original Friday the 13^th. See her here when she got to play in better fare.

Fans of Westerns will enjoy.

Fans of lawman wisdom, doubly so.

Come for the story, the lessons, the heart and revel in the craft of each shot composition.

While not a classic in the old school sense, stack it up against any mass produced “action” flick today, and well, you got yourself a bonafide mature piece of art right here.