Jimmy Stewart and Walter Brennan are partners rustling cattle up to the Yukon and get hoodwinked by a crooked border town lawman, Gannon (a devilish John McIntyre). They get rescued by saucy Ruth Roman and decide to stay in Canada staking a successful gold claim. But Jimmy has dreams of buying a ranch in Utah and must figure out a way to leave without going through Gannon's border town and getting hung.
Beautifully shot in Alberta, Canada, Jimmy plays a reluctant hero who watches a frontier town full of kind people get bullied and taken for a ride by John McIntyre and his gruesome henchmen full of mugs like Jack Elam, Henry Morgan and a scary Robert J Wilke. McIntyre seems to be having a ball just relishing in his villainy, always on the lookout for a good hangin'. He's gleeful as he steals everyone's gold claims through a technicality in the law. Stewart only looks out for himself, and his good-natured buddy Ben Tatum (a loveable Walter Brennan), and is indifferent to all the bullying. Corinne Calvet plays a cute tomboyish French girl who immediately takes a liking to Stewart who doesn't take her seriously and treats her like a kid much to her irritation. As Gannon works over the town Stewart is left with the choice to do something or sit idle. And eventually push comes to shove. The town is full of great character actors like Connie Gilchrist, Kathleen Freeman, Royal Dano, Chubby Johnson and JC Flippin. A lovable bunch that have a great warm sense of community. It makes me want to give up my life and move to the Yukon and eat bear stew at the Hash House.
A beautiful western directed by Anthony Mann with a great script by Borden Chase. The westerns Mann did with Jimmy Stewart are some of the best of the genre, equal only to the films Budd Boetticher did with Randolph Scott. WATCH OUT FOR THAT AVALANCHE-!!
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