Blowing Wild

Like most westerns the past haunts and moves the people around like doomed chess pieces. Life, death, love and power all predetermined notions played out by unreliable narrators. Every frame tightly packed

"The Wages of Fear", Hollywood B-movie style, followed by a love triangle melodrama (with Mexican banditos and oil wells). Cooper is a charisma-free lump here (not so different than usual, I guess), and Anthony Quinn is an odd, weak romantic lead type. This leaves Stanwyck with very little to play off of, and she seems to be at a loss much of the time. But worst of all is that sappy ballad, sung by a tenor with a too-fast vibrato, its verses doled out throughout the movie--so unbearably cheesy.

Passes the time.