How sad is this?

Admirable film.

A Masterpiece!

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

So we're given some pretty basic ordinary western material to begin with, but very quickly the film transforms into a framework of interesting symbols and morals.First of all, without giving away too much, the position of Kirk Douglas as the lead character but as the lead character 'in what direction' ? There are interesting relationships woven between the characters progressively as Douglas attempts to mount his great escape plan. In particular, the friendship between the painter and promoter characters. The painter a symbol of Good in the film, the pure one with a gift from above who always aligns with the side of truth and reason, like a moral compass.There's an interesting moral at the end, 'what goes around comes around', karma, almost akin to Greek mythology like there is an inevitable fate to men.Really pretty interesting film, not at all your casual average western. One could almost say this is some sort of a "Shawshank Redemption" before the hour.

I've always loved westerns and am a sucker for a good prison break story, so of course I am a fan of THERE WAS A CROOKED MAN..., a cynical and revisionist western, which for some reason was released at Christmas of 1970. It is the only western in the long career of Joseph L. Mankiewicz, a director better known for the Academy Awards he won for A LETTER TO THREE WIVES and ALL ABOUT EVE, a pair of sophisticated dramas. It's also the first movie written by David Newman and Robert Benton after they won an Oscar for BONNIE AND CLYDE. So there was no lack of talent behind the camera, yet CROOKED MAN... was not a big hit.Maybe that was because it was marketed as a traditional western drama with a cast of old pros; the trailer posted on Youtube sells THERE WAS A CROOKED MAN... as an adventure wherein a charming rogue, played by Kirk Douglas, schemes and plots a daring break from an isolated Arizona prison so he can collect $500.000 in stolen money he has hidden away. But what moviegoers got was a story filled with ruthless, hypocritical and calculating characters, gritty detail (a fistfight takes place in an open latrine)and open homosexuality; hardly John Ford territory. The screenplay seems to say that greed and larceny can be found in the hearts of even the best of men, and that given half a chance and the right motivation, everyone is a criminal. It's a potent theme and one audiences of the Nixon era would find acceptable, but THERE WAS A CROOKED MAN... simply did not find its own audience.Which is a shame, since CROOKED MAN... is very entertaining and the main reason is the two leads, played by Douglas and Henry Fonda, portraying devious criminal Paris Pittman Jr. and honest Warden Woodward Lopeman respectively. Behind the walls of the prison, these two characters parry with each other as Pittman plots a breakout while Lopeman seeks to use Pittman's natural abilities as a leader to get the prisoners to accept his enlightened and reform minded administration. In the end, things turn out most unexpectedly for both men.CROOKED MAN... is a great showcase for both Douglas and Fonda, the only time the two ever worked together. Kirk Douglas was a great actor of enormous range, with the ability to play conscienceless heels in CHAMPION, ACE IN THE HOLE and OUT OF THE PAST and great heroic figures in SPARTACUS and LONELY ARE THE BRAVE; and be totally believable every time. He never lost his intensity and his physical grace, even this late in his career when he was well past fifty. Paris Pittman Jr. would be one of his most villainous characterizations ever; a cold blooded murderer, user and betrayer whose outward charm covers up a truly reptilian interior. Henry Fonda was an heroic icon of the western genre by the time he made this film, even though he'd upturned that legacy the year before in Sergio Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. At first glance, his crippled Warden Lopeman seems to be the one honest man among a nest of vipers, but it's the good Warden who puts the final twist on the story when temptation is laid before him.As good as the two leads are in THERE WAS A CROOKED MAN..., they are backed up by an outstanding cast of character stars; chief among them being the great Warren Oates as Floyd Moon, a surly loner who thinks he has found a friend in Paris Pittman. This was only a year after Oates had worked for Sam Peckinpah in THE WILD BUNCH and his work here is just as good; what a treat it is to see Oates hold his own in scenes with Douglas and Fonda. There are also great parts for Burgess Meredith, Hume Cronyn, John Randolph, Arthur O'Connell, Alan Hale Jr., Victor French, Lee Grant, Claudia MacNiel, Bert Freed, Martin Gabel, Gene Evans, Jeanne Cooper and Barbara Rhodes. All of them portraying inmates, prison guards, whores and various other sundry individuals. Chinese Olympian C.K. Yang is Ah Ping, the huge and mute inmate who falls under Pittman's sway. For better or worse, new ground was plowed in the western genre in the scenes where the guard played by Freed is shown openly lusting for young inmate Michael Blogett, and in the characters of Cyrus and Dudley (Randolph and Cronyn), two aging con men who carry on like an old married couple.For fans of Kirk Douglas, Henry Fonda, Warren Oates, or westerns in general and just plain movie buffs, THERE WAS A CROOKED MAN... is a must see film. It might not be what its makers intended, but there is something unique about the results that makes it worth the look.

The American western film was in a transitional period when "Cleopatra" director Joseph L. Mankiewicz helmed "There Was A Crooked Man" with Kirk Douglas, Henry Fonda, and Warren Oates. "Bonnie and Clyde" scenarists David Newman and Robert Benton penned this above-average oater both a cunning thief who steals a half-million dollars from a wealthy man. The man who was robbed spots the robber in a bordello when he is peering through a hole in the wall. He raises the alarm, and the authorities capture the protagonist and sentence him to a ten year stretch in the territorial prison in the middle of a sun-scorched desert. Kirk Douglas is appropriately charismatic as Paris Pittman, Jr., an auburn-haired outlaw, while Henry Fonda is suitably stolid and upright as the moral guardian of virtue. Warren Oates is cast as a two-timing desperado who sold anybody out that befriended him. Burgess Meredith plays a crusty old cuss of an outlaw named 'the Missouri Kid' who grows his old marihuana. The bespectacled Pittman engineers a foolproof plan to break out of the prison, and the naive new warden, Woodward W. Lopeman (Henry Fonda) plays along with our anti-hero who takes advantage of the warden's liberal attitude toward the prison reform. Pittman convinces all of his cellmates to conspire with him. He has two confidence men, Dudley Whinner (Hume Cronyn of "Brute Force") and Cyrus McNutt (John Randolph of "Seconds"), along with a treacherous two-bite outlaw, Moon (Warren Oates of "The Wild Bunch"), a young murderer set to hang, Coy Cavendish (Michael Blodgett of "40 Guns to Apache Pass") and a muscular Chinese immigrant, Ah-Ping (C.K. Yang of "One More Train to Rob"), to help him blow up the prison walls and start a riot. Initially, when Paris escaped from the whorehouse before he was later caught, he stashed the loot—in a pair of saddle bags and a ladies bloomer drawers—in a rocky pit slithering with rattlesnakes. Mankiewicz does a good job with the Newman and Benton screenplay, and this 126 minute, Technicolor horse opera never wears out its welcome. The manipulative way that Paris Pittman uses his cellmates for his own ends is what makes "There Was Crooked Man" so entertaining. The ending contains a surprise or two. Lenser Harry Stradling Jr. gives this western a nice, crisp appearance, while Edward Carrere's production designs are excellent. Most of the action transpires in the prison. Clearly, the moral of this amoral western is that nobody is entirely safe from temptation. Moreover, "There Was A Crooked Man" reflected the increasingly cynical nature of American westerns in the shadow of the Spaghetti western. There are also two instances of homosexuality here between two prison inmates and a sadistic prison foreman and a young man. Homosexual subplots rarely appeared in westerns until the 1970s, while 'the Missouri Kid' use of marihuana came long after the villain in "For A Few Dollars More" smoked pot.

Mank didn't write the screenplay for this, his penultimate movie but elected instead for a script from the team responsible for Bonnie and Clyde. The plot itself, a melange of Western meets Big House was also something of a departure though given his proved eclecticism no one was really surprised. Curate's Egg is as good a description as any for while it is definitely good in parts ultimately it fails to satisfy. Hume Cronyn, working for a third and final time with Mank may well have relished the return to at least half the genre where he made his name - at least as a film actor - as the brutal warder in Brute Force playing someone diametrically opposite in the form of a gay con. I didn't note that much chemistry between the two leads, Douglas and Fonda, unlike say, Douglas and Lancaster but the film does benefit from a rich assortment of support in the shape of John Randolph, Warren Oates, Arthur O'Connell, Burgess Meredith and Lee Grant. Douglas' exotically named Paris Pitman seems out of place in the Arizona desert but charms his way through. Interesting rather than memorable.