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List Price: $14.98 | | Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Salesrank: 15009
Released: September 4, 2001 |
| Our Price: $8.40 |
| Used Price: $5.87 |
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MPAA Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Burt Lancaster is an uncompromising lawman who defies the odds when he single-handedly confronts a gang of killers in this "extraordinarily perceptive" (Films & Filming) and action-packed taleof life and justice on the American frontier. When Sabbath town-boss Vincent Bronson (Cobb) and his drunken ranch hands unwittingly kill an old man in Bannack, everyone knows it was an accident. Everyone, that is, except Bannack's marshal, Jered Maddox (Lancaster). A tough, no-nonsense manof the law, Maddox is determined to bring the killers to justice. Trailing them back to Sabbath, Maddox makes his intentions clear: "I'm gonna take these men back with me," he vows, "or kill them where they stand." So when Bronson sends word that he wants to make a deal, the inflexible Maddox refuses, a decision that forces Bronson's men to let their guns do the talking. But Jered Maddox is not aman to back down...he'll bring these desperate killers back to Bannack, his way. Dead or alive.
Description of Lawman:
Burt Lancaster is excellent as the title character, a pitiless, unbending marshal out to arrest seven cowhands who left a dead man in the wake of a drunken tear, in this stoic, modern take on a classic Western theme. He confronts a rancher baron, trigger-happy gunmen, and the cowardly hypocrites of a frontier town: the usual bunch of Old West types sculpted into intriguing character by a crack cast. Robert Ryan brings a sad dignity to his former gunfighter tamed into a meek town marshal, and Lee J. Cobb is introspective and thoughtful as the aging cattleman weary of his life of violence: "It took guns to take this land, guns to keep it, and guns to make it grow.... Each time we bury the cost." Robert Duvall, Albert Salmi, and a young Richard Jordan (as an idealistic cowpoke whose sense of honor gets a workout in the complex conflicts) also star.
The first American feature by British director Michael Winner (who went on to make numerous tough Charles Bronson pictures, including the first three Death Wish movies) is lean and tough, with a streak of "passing of an era" melancholia, but surprisingly old-fashioned. The hard-edged, unsentimental violence, arid, austere look of the picture, and distracting overuse of zoom shots mark it as an unmistakable product of the early 1970s, but it's not so much cynical as sorrowful in its clash of ideals, and never less than clear-eyed in the presentation of harsh frontier realities. --Sean Axmaker
Lawman Reviews:
One more DVD RipOff !!! 
2009-10-21 - Why Oh Why- When we pay good=hard to get money for a great film like LAWMAN do we get a cut & butchered copy w/ many minutes missing-this is dim & we all are being RIPPED Big Time by the powers that be!!! Still a great movie & I did order it= but it is not the same film that I saw years ago at a cinema in my hometown of Glendale Ca,I'm really disappointed about the scene w/Burt & miss North in bed- the film I saw then showed her good looking breasts,but the DVD I received from AMAZON has those covered w/a sheet! that along w/all the other cut outs OMG we all are getting RIPPED.Lawman (1971) [VHS]
Andy Griffith's Opposite 
2009-06-22 - This is a great movie, it's as if Andy and Barney Fife have switched roles with deadly results. The Barney-like character played by Ryan sees the big picture and is pragmatic and compromising. He's wants peace and quiet in the town even if it means overlooking the letter of the law sometimes. But he is weak.
Lancaster is the strong one, but with no concern for peace and quiet. He's myopically focused on executing the letter of the law without any regard for the surrounding circumstances.
That said the movie is full of moral questions and I think most are portrayed very well. Maddox is a good man, with many faults, as are the other characters. It really makes you think about the imperfections of the world we live in and how applying the "rules" in a very strict manner doesn't always make sense. Maddox is unwilling to make any sort of compromise until it is too late. Still, you see his resignation & compromise at the end as a maturation and humility of his character that is endearing & human.
Of course that lasts only a brief moment as the final shootout looms and he snaps back into his executioner role even gunning down the cowardly Hurd Price in the back as he flees. That is the most morally vexing moment of the film for me. It was completely unnecessary, but in the heat of the battle maybe Maddox just blew it. You're left wondering.
Anyway, the cinematography I found to be very good. Lee J. Cobb as Bronson does a great job reflecting on his difficult, costly rise to power and giving credit to those he's defeated along the way. He has no stomach at his age for further violence but when Maddox justifiably guns down his lifelong partner he feels he has no choice but to fight to the end.
The role of Duvall as Vernon Adams sort of plays out the theme of the movie in a miniature subplot. He feels he has done nothing wrong and just wants to be left alone. He is willing to shoot Maddox in the back to make hime go away. He is a villain (though a somewhat passive one), but you can sympathize with the predicament he's in. Ultimately his pride and poor decisions get him shot.
The heroic Maddox makes as many mistakes as the bad guys in this one. I don't think it's moral relativism to say Maddox could have sought justice in a less violent way. But killing, admittedly, is what he is best at, and that's how he gets the job done. Woe unto those who don't understand the way he works!
Among his Best!
2008-08-30 - These oldies were really packed with action for those days so you can't really compare to Rambo,DieHard,Bourne Ultimatum et al, but they're still fun to watch.
You buy the man above him
2007-09-01 - A wonderful, thinking man's, neo-traditional Western. Burt excels as the lawdog made of granite. He doesn't bend, he doesn't trade. He wavers for a brief moment, but the inexorable workings of the patterns of his life pull him back into line. The flickers that pass over his tired face are a masterful demonstration of cinema acting. Beautiful, intricate script to chew on. It's stuffed with strong dialogue, full of meat. Superb, relentless pacing. Stunning shoot-outs. Like a game of chess, there are rules. But it doesn't matter how good you are; you've got to have the killer instinct if you're going to win. What are the issues? If you tried to buy the man above Maddox, who would that be? "There is no easy comfort from God" says the preacher. "From the hardness comes forth purity" is his funeral message. Maddox doesn't need to see from where he stands --- he's the sword of Gideon. And life catches up with everyone in the end. The land was won with guns, and the defeated native Americans ride past in stoic silence. Finally, after watching this implacable story several times, I managed to figure out who shot the old man in Bannock. That killing was NOT an accident. There are enough hints in the early part, and the ending brings it all together with a truly satisfying closure. This is one of the finest of the Western genre, as good as High Noon, and far better than most.
A great Western but a criminal DVD transfer
2007-03-04 - If nothing else, Lawman proves that there is such a thing as a script so good that not even Michael Winner could screw it up, although having an excellent cast doesn't hurt. Burt Lancaster is the lawman of the title, determined to bring in several cattlemen (Robert Duvall among them) only to find that the local boss Lee J. Cobb owns the town and its once famous, now cowardly world-weary sheriff Robert Ryan, who all but steals the film. Curiously, Ryan far preferred this film to The Wild Bunch, though that may be down to Winner's deference to his stars compared with the thoroughly miserable time he had working with Peckinpah (there's another Peckinpah connection in composer Jerry Fielding, who contributes a good, brooding score). Joseph Wiseman, Richard Jordan, Albert Salmi and Sheree North are also thrown into the mix, and surprisingly all of them have well defined characters in what becomes an increasingly complex morality play about the void between what's legal and what's practical as Lancaster begins to realize that his strict adherence to the letter of the law has left him with nothing else in his life.
At times Gerald Wilson's script is perhaps a tad overwritten - everyone gets their big scene explaining their worldview, with no-one truly bad, merely weak - but it's a forgivable weakness. Winner's not quite as overly reliant on crash zooms as usual, though his characteristic laziness does manifest itself in one scene that has characters ride up to Cobb's house in darkness and come into the room in daylight, but for someone like Winner that's almost verging on the competent by his standards. Sadly MGM/UA's Region 1 DVD is a stinker of a transfer, looking like it was shot through a dirty window. The trailer is the only extra.
