Nevada Smith: Henry Hathaway

Henry Hathaway's Nevada Smith is one of the most thematically fascinating of all of Hathaway's Westerns. It charts its protagonist, a half-Indian man named Max Sand, as he charts down the three outlaws responsible for the gruesome torture and murder of his parents. At the beginning, he's a fresh-faced teenager. But as his quest for revenge lengthens, he slowly changes into the very thing he hates most: a murderous outlaw. During a conversation with Jonas Cord, Sr. (Brian Keith), a traveling gunsmith, he learns that to truly hunt these men down, he'll have to become as mean as them, as cruel as them, as merciless as them. The question, then, is whether or not Sand will allow himself to fully transmogrify into a monster. It's a fascinating film, aided by a surprisingly leisurely Picaresque plot: it takes a loose approach to Sand's quest, instead charting different sequences in his life and all the people--usually women--he meets and uses up along the way. The film is done in, however, by the grotesque miscasting of Steve McQueen as Sand. First off, they didn't even bother to make him look young or half Native American (although I guess we should be thankful they didn't put him in brownface). He was a whopping 36 years old when he played the role of a young teenager, and it's frequently painful to see other actors and actresses treat him as such. And McQueen's performance is scattershot: in some scenes he'll be befuddled and naive, in others he'll be wooden and/or coldblooded. And sometimes they'll happen within the space of a single scene.

6/10