Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Sam Peckinpah's "Ride the High Country" is framed like one of John Ford's westerns and one thing in common with those and many other western movies that this is one of the best westerns ever made. The movie stars Joel McCrea as Steve Judd an ex Union Army soldier and retired lawman who is hired to find and transport gold back to the bank, but he couldn't do it alone as he couldn't think of any other person better to help him than his old friend Gil Westrum (Randolph Scott) who brought along a young kid named Heck Longtree (Ron Starr), while on the trail the three men stay for the night on a ranch owned by a man named Joshua Knudsen (R.G. Armstrong) who is very religious and has a daughter named Elsa (Mariette Hartley) who Longtree gets a crush on but doesn't find out right away that she is engaged to a man named Billy Hammond (James Drury) who along with his brothers have very bad manners and do not treat Elsa very well. As the movie goes on Judd finds out that Westrum is trying to betray him by stealing the gold and keeping it for himself despite their friendship knowing all along and repeatedly denying that it would happen, arrests him and then they become friends again. This movie would go on to be Randolph Scott's final role in movies and after filming ended he said that making movies no longer interested him and that he couldn't give any better performance than he did in this movie which would end up being his most popular film. The performances are excellent especially featuring standout work from both Scott and McCrea (who was very modest about his own acting abilities) thanks to a great screenplay from N.B. Stone Jr., and Peckinpah's direction for this movie which happened to be his second film that he directed, as well as the beautiful cinematography by Lucien Ballard. The movie ranks among the best western movies that I've ever seen in my entire life and I've seen lots of them, and thanks to a masterpiece like this as well as one of the top ten best films of 1962 I am totally looking forward to seeing more of Sam Peckinpah's movies in the future.

Clean all white western--no blacks, no native Americans! Even the characters admit that one's actions are never black or white, meaning there are a lot of grey actions in our lives. Joel McCrea's character wants to go to the House (read, heaven). Very religious script for a western. Now, did Altman take a leaf from this film's gold diggers' community sequence to make "McCabe and Mrs Miller"?

With Sam Peckinpah directing and with Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott starring you expect a first rate western. And this one delivers. I think it lacks some of the character depth of some of the other classic westerns. But the acting is good and the story offers moral perspective. And this movie also offers some beautifully sprawling scenic shots. What did stand out for me was the ending. Not everyone rides off happily into the sunset. The final scene did take me by surprise. And even though it was within the context of the character & he did request it...it did bother me that they just walked away and left him. But I'm sure that eliciting feelings similar to mine were just what Mr. Peckinpah was going for. I would recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys an old fashioned western. It has a great teaming of stars. And a very good supporting cast.

We have a group of 3, later 4, traveling together along a primitive mountain horse trail from the valley town of Hornitos, CA to a primitive mining camp(Coarse Gold). Although not always obvious at first, the 4 have 4 goals between them for so traveling together. Young Elsa Knudsen is running away from her overbearing father to marry a man in the mining camp she barely knows. Old-timer, sometimes former lawman, Steve Judd(Joel McCrea) is going to pick up a shipment of gold nuggets for the bank, after various miners have been robbed and killed recently making this journey. He enlists an old sometimes lawman buddy, Gil(Randy Scott), currently reduced to being a Buffalo Bill-imitating side showman in a carnival, and Gil's young partner, Heck, to back up in case of trouble. The problem is that Gil actually plans to steal the gold, with Heck's reluctant complicity. Gil hopes to later convince Steve to join them. Meanwhile, Heck hopes to seduce the flirtatious Elsa along the way, and perhaps convince her to abandon her fiancé for him. This yarn is full of rather familiar characters and situations for westerns. There is the attempted gold shipment heist. The seedy mining camp, populated by an assortment of criminals, opportunists, drunks, gamblers and bawdy gaudy prostitutes. There is Edgar Buchanan, in a familiar role as the always drunk corrupt judge in this camp. We have a naïve young woman being fought over by unsavory men, as she is attempting to escape her possessive father's grasp. We have an old gunslinger in Steve, who is trying to justify his life by doing good deeds to hopefully cancel out some past bad deeds. We also have an old gunslinger in Gil, who feels no need to justify his existence by always doing the useful and honorable thing. He may help Steve achieve his goals, or he may do what he thinks is best for him. Finally, we have a band of 5 brutish brothers in the mining camp, who leave Gil unscathed in their several gun battles, but eventually mortally wound Steve, leaving Gil and Heck to decide what to do with the gold. Steve's death eliminates the threat of their being jailed for their past attempted robbery.The screenplay has elements roughly similar to those in several westerns I am familiar with. In some respects, it rather resembles "Vera Cruz", with Steve taking on Cooper's role as the more honorable of the pair, while Gil is the counterpart of Lancaster's greedy character. However, the ending is quite different. Instead of a shootout between the two men, Steve and Gil partner in a mimicry of the legendary OK coral gunfight between the Earps vs. a gang of rowdy cowboys. It also differs in that the more honorable one of the pair, rather than the greedy one, dies. Thus, we have to hope, with no assurance, that Gil will live up to his promise to the dying Steve that he will complete Steve's mission of delivering the gold, and will live an honorable life thereafter. It also somewhat resembles "Along the Great Divide", in which Kirk Douglass is transporting a suspected cattle thief and murder plus his daughter to a distant town for trial, while the trio are being harassed periodically by the victim family, intent on killing the suspect without a trial.We don't find out why old Gil and young Heck are friends. Heck is simply required by the plot. Although later in film, Heck is portrayed as being perhaps worthy of Elsa's trust and love, we aren't very comfortable with his character, because he was talked into stealing the gold, and because he tries to rape Elsa at one point, after he got the understandable impression that she was encouraging him, while supposedly on the trail to marry another man. Thus, we also wonder about Elsa's character: whether she is any more loyal wife material, at present, than the bawdy Kate and her prostitutes. Hence, the only character we are really comfortable with is Steve, because he consistently does the honorable thing, in breaking up Heck's rape attempt, initiating and carrying out the contentious rescue of Elsa from the clutches of the evil Hammonds, and in attempting to deliver the gold to the bank in the face of treason by his companions.On the surface, the Hammonds are prospectors. We may suspect, but are provided no evidence, that they carried out the recent thefts and murders on this trail. What is so special about Elsa to them, with plenty of willing prostitutes available, to make them risk their lives to recapture this now fearful bride? Do they know that the party of 4 is carrying much gold, thus providing an additional reason for attacking them? Steve's strategy of shaming the remaining brothers into exiting the house to fight a gun battle in the open comes across as very contrived. I can't believe they were that compliant or cared one iota about their sense of honor!This is an unusual story in that Randy's character is first billed and the ultimate survivor, whereas McCrea's character clearly is the more heroic, encouraging Randy's character to live up to his standards, and eventually to replace him when he dies. Thus, Steve serves as the better father model for young Heck, as Heck eventually recognizes.I have noted the many similarities with the plot of the previous "Ride Lonesome", in another review.