If you watch this film with care, you will see that every shot has been perfectly crafted. The deep blue skies and reddish rock colour go perfectly with the steely blue eyes and yellowish skin of Richard Widmark. Even the colour of his tunic blends in with the rest. The cameraman here must have been a real genius as every shot is perfect.Great attention seems to have been paid to the color of the sky, the position of the sun and even the shots in "contre-jour" come out perfectly - in short, a real FEAST for the eyes. This film has only recently been made available on DVD in the USA and is of course absent from Europe, though we have plenty of other, and many inferior quality Westerns available on DVD....this should have been one of the first to come out...but this was not to be the case. Plot-wise the film is quite enthralling, and it's interesting to note the change in attitude of the people with time towards Widmark, from suspicion and hate towards gratitude and love by the end. The other actors give reasonable performances but of course in this film, Widmark steals the show, just as he did in "No Way Out". The scenes with the Indians, smoke signals etc are awesome and very colourful. Also the soundtrack is very good, I even thought it was Dimitri Tiomkin who had composed it, but I was wrong. When I saw the film initially, I was fearing some ghastly sad ending, thinking that Widmark would inevitably come a cropper, but fortunately, love rules OK and all turns out right ! Phew ! This is a film that every true Western-lover should have on the shelves of his/her DVDthèque.
Review of The Last Wagon
