Tired Palomino

Welcome to Hard Times is a movie composed entirely of other movies. Every character has been pretested in scores of scenarios: the evil gunslinger; the aging lawman, poor but honest; the frightened townspeople; prostitutes with guaranteed 24-carat hearts.

The badman (Aldo Ray) is the worst wrongo since Johnny Ringo. He breaks the tops off whisky bottles before he downs their contents, rapes and kills a dance-hall girl, sets fire to buildings and, all in all, makes the town of Hard Times a place to forget. While another dance-hall girl (Janice Rule) and a young boy conspire to knock off the villain next time he shows up, the mayor (Henry Fonda) is too frightened to kill and too tired to run. Anxious only to rebuild Hard Times and make it a good place for business, he gets his wish when Keenan Wynn jounces into town with a wagonload of cuties to entertain the local miners. Pretty soon the whole town swings like a pair of saloon doors, and gold and whisky are as plentiful as hossflies.

Re-enter Ray with blood in his eye, just begging for his comeuppance, which takes place when Fonda finally gets the gumption to gun him down. Fortunately for the film, even the small roles are in the hands of some of the oldest pros in the business--among them Edgar Buchanan as a Government man and Lon Chancy as a bartender. Handling the cliches with the care of a cowpoke tending a tired palomino, they make Hard Times seem better than it is because they have been there before-- many times. So has the audience.

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