"Bend of the River" welcomes the fine blend of a passionate action with intense characterization that had become Mann's masterful specialty...
Stewart (in his second feature with Mann after "Winchester '73") is seen as a reluctant hero, stumbled, brutalized and confused, chasing a personal mission with severe determination, and giving life to the complex moral and psychological forces that drive Mann's heroes...
Vivid as a laconic quiet man driven by betrayal to violent rage, Stewart is a former raider on the Missouri-Kansas border, who guides a wagon train of settlers to Oregon... There he gets double-crossed by associates who try to turn aside necessary food and supplies to gold-rush activities...
Ingenious and malicious, Arthur Kennedy (very much in his element), is Stewart's former companion-in-crime whom Stewart saves from hanging, and helps him fight the Indians on the way to Oregon...
Adroit, insincere, and dishonest, Kennedy turns on Stewart stealing the settler's supplies for a handsome profit but is later dispatched by an irritated and enraged Stewart...
Kennedy has been preferred in Westerns as the more insidious kind of villain: friendly, smiling, charming and smooth-talking on the surface, weak and corrupt underneath... His specialty is the courteous type who befriends the hero and then turns out to be planning something illegal to his own advantage on the side...
Julie Adams is along the ride as a love interest getting short penitence in all the macho interplay...
Rock Hudson is cast as a soft gambling man from San Francisco, adept at cards as well as women, defender of a fair deal, ready to fight beside his friends...
Filmed against a breathtaking Technicolor panorama, with nice music that highlights the action, "Bend of the River" is a good standard Western with pace and period feeling, rolling along to its predictable happy ending, discarding any unwanted characters...
Stewart (in his second feature with Mann after "Winchester '73") is seen as a reluctant hero, stumbled, brutalized and confused, chasing a personal mission with severe determination, and giving life to the complex moral and psychological forces that drive Mann's heroes...
Vivid as a laconic quiet man driven by betrayal to violent rage, Stewart is a former raider on the Missouri-Kansas border, who guides a wagon train of settlers to Oregon... There he gets double-crossed by associates who try to turn aside necessary food and supplies to gold-rush activities...
Ingenious and malicious, Arthur Kennedy (very much in his element), is Stewart's former companion-in-crime whom Stewart saves from hanging, and helps him fight the Indians on the way to Oregon...
Adroit, insincere, and dishonest, Kennedy turns on Stewart stealing the settler's supplies for a handsome profit but is later dispatched by an irritated and enraged Stewart...
Kennedy has been preferred in Westerns as the more insidious kind of villain: friendly, smiling, charming and smooth-talking on the surface, weak and corrupt underneath... His specialty is the courteous type who befriends the hero and then turns out to be planning something illegal to his own advantage on the side...
Julie Adams is along the ride as a love interest getting short penitence in all the macho interplay...
Rock Hudson is cast as a soft gambling man from San Francisco, adept at cards as well as women, defender of a fair deal, ready to fight beside his friends...
Filmed against a breathtaking Technicolor panorama, with nice music that highlights the action, "Bend of the River" is a good standard Western with pace and period feeling, rolling along to its predictable happy ending, discarding any unwanted characters...