Day of the Outlaw (1959) 

"Watch what happens to the women… watch the west explode!" 

Man, the western-in-a-snow-landscape genre always has this bleak streak to it, it seems.

This kind of under snowed western (pun intended) stars Robert Ryan as Blaise Starett, a coarse cattleman who operates in a small, remote town somewhere in Wyoming. He has a partner named Dan (Nehemiah Persoff) who is getting jaded with Starett's rough ways, but stays with him because they've been through a lot together, or so is hinted at in the opening. Starett has developed a feud with local farmer Hal Crane (Alan Marshall) over some barbed wire fences and is prepared to kill him for this rather insignificant quarrel. It quickly becomes clear this is not the actual reason he wants Crane out of the way, he has entertained an affair with Crane's wife Helen (Tina Louise) over the past few months and she isn't ready to leave her husband for him. 

Just when things are about to come to a boil, a brand-new bombshell in the form of Jack Bruhn (Burl Ives) and his men enter the picture. They are thieves, on the run of the cavalry after robbing a bank. Bruhn is wounded and he and his band of thugs are looking for a hideout so he can recover and then leave through the mountains again. To do so they have to keep the entire town hostage. Bruhn's posse is eager to go on a bender and have its way with the town's women, but their leader won't let them. He is a former cavalry officer, has some sense of honor left, and he has given the town his word they won't harass the inhabitants, and he needs his men sober in case of emergency. His entourage reluctantly agrees, because they fear their leader. Ives, channeling a bit of an eighties' Jack Nicholson vibe here, has indeed quite a powerful presence, with his eyes always spurred wide open, never blinking, giving the impression that he is aware of every move that is made in this town. 

But just when the town members are starting to feel safe, the doctor tells them Bruhn's gun wound is fatal, he probably won't survive the next day. It is certain that, once their captain is out of the way, nothing will stop these men from burying this town. Their intentions are undeniable, they look at the local women like a dog looks at food waiting on the kitchen counter, ready to get himself a piece of it. Which shows you immediately the movie's biggest problem: the way it portrays the women as mere possible victims that are only there to higher the stakes and to give the men something to fight for. It even goes as far as the damn tagline.

 

The movie has a brutal, nasty feeling to it, without ever really showing us anything. The promise of violence is more than enough to keep the tension up. Every move the lead characters make could have the same impact as lighting a match next to a gas pump. Not even the children are safe. Gene (David Nelson) the youngest member of the posse, seems to be the only one with some morals left, but even he isn't able to keep the men under control. 

A fist fight halfway through the movie (the only real piece of action you're going to get out of this movie) between Starett and some the thugs reminded me of another Robert Ryan movie, The Set-Up, and while the action here isn't nearly as riveting as in Robert Wise famous b-picture, Ryan is about a decade older in this, and every punch seems to carry even more weight than the last one. He has this tired, worn-out look of someone who carries the weight of the entire world on his back, or at least thinks he does. When he goes down you're not entirely sure if he is going to stand up again, not something you would easily worry about with your regular western protagonist. After the fight, beaten and broken down, he looks in the mirror and decides he doesn't like what he sees, realizing this is his last chance to do something right for a change. A moment that could easily be considered corny, but Ryan can convey self-loathing like no other actor from that classical Hollywood era. 

Director De Toth and screenwriter Lee Wells eventually opt for a more existential approach to the ending (the snow is there for a reason, guys), offering our "hero" a chance to redeem himself, a way to distinct himself from these brutes. He can’t make up for past mistakes, but perhaps he can find a way to look in the mirror again without wanting to smash it. 

In an attempt to get these outlaws out of town and saving his neighbors, Starett lies about there being a way to go through the mountains, a way only he has traveled through before. Going through the hills during a snow blizzard would be a guaranteed suicide mission for everyone involved, Starett included, but he is prepared to sacrifice all that. Bruhn and Gene quickly see through his plans, but both of them realize what will happen if they stay in this town, and since Bruhn knows his going to die, he too wants to do one thing right before he dies, preventing another massacre to happen like the one that got him discharged from the cavalry.

That finale, a bitterly cold march through the desolate, snowy landscape, where even horses are having trouble to struggle through, is surprisingly merciless. There is something haunting about it, because everyone knows damn well that, if they die here, there is no chance of their bodies ever to be found back. The place is a cemetery waiting to happen. Slowly the greed and the cold take a hold of these men, and in the end it's not really clear who was actually good, only who was worse, and who died.