Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Kidskycom It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

gavin6942 In Silver Lode, Dan Ballard (John Payne) is arrested by four marshals for murder and theft but he denies the charges and searches for the real culprit even as the townsfolk start abandoning him.The film has a plot eerily similar to "High Noon" (1952), and Marshal McCarty appears to be a veiled reference to Senator Joseph McCarthy. So this then becomes one of those westerns that made sly political statements about witch hunts and blacklisting. The subtext is often more interesting than the western genre on its face, as a matter of fact.Not being a devotee of westerns or the films of Dwan, I don't really know much about this one... it seems to me to be low budget, comparable to many of the TV shows of the 1960s. I suppose in that respect, it is slightly ahead of its time, but certainly is not on the A-list of must-see westerns.

zardoz-13 "Sands of Iwo Jima" director Allan Dwan doesn't squander a single second in his suspenseful RKO western saga "Silver Lode" about an innocent man driven to prove that he has been framed for both murder and robbery. "Saga of Death Valley" scenarist Karen DeWolf thrusts the protagonist into an obstacle course of predicaments as he struggles to convince the town citizens about his inherent virtuosity. Dwan and DeWolf keep our hero jumping through hoops. About midway through the narrative, things begin to unravel for the villains. One of them is willing to tell our hero the truth about the frame-up. The filmmakers confine the same day action to the frontier town limits of Silver Lode. The citizens are celebrating the Fourth of July. The performances are all strong and the casting credible. You'll recognize several familiar faces, among them Harry Carey, Jr., Stuart Whitman, Emile Meyer, and Morris Ankrum. John Payne looks appropriately anxious as the incriminated hero, while Dan Duryea is a sinister lawman Fred McCarty who claims that our hero not only stole twentieth thousand dollars but also shot his brother in the back. As his future wife, Lizabeth Scott refuses to believe that he could be guilty of those crimes. Town sentiment starts out strongly in the hero's favor. Gradually it swings in the opposite direction. Initially, Duryea and his deputies interrupt Dan Ballard's wedding, but he has trouble getting his credentials approved. Dwan and his scenarists make "Silver Lode" into a gripping cat & mouse showdown between the hero and the villain.

Dalbert Pringle Released in 1954 - Silver Lode stands tall as a pretty decent Western in its own right. True. Its familiar story can easily be compared to "High Noon" in many ways, but, nevertheless, it is an entertaining cowboy flick, all the same.Filmed with the obvious restrictions of its B-movie budget, this vintage, Technicolor Western tells the tale of Dan Ballard, a decent man (relatively new to town) who (on his wedding day, which also happens to be the 4th of July) finds himself being accused of cold-blooded murder and the theft of $20,000.This unjust accusation is leveled at Ballard by Marshal McCarty, a very mean and forceful lawman, who unexpectedly arrives in town from Discovery, California, in the company of his 3 rough-looking deputies.Needless to say, an intense conflict takes place that quickly escalates into an all-out gunfight which has almost every able-bodied man in town involved (and even some of the women).With his life now hanging delicately in the balance, Ballard soon finds himself a hunted man in his own hometown. A vicious, mindless mob-mentality takes over as the citizens of Silver Lode pursue Ballard with a blind, hateful vengeance.Silver Lode was a film that was very much a product of its time. It was produced during the "McCarthy" era, when film producers, writers and actors were called to account during a (literal) political witch hunt.This film's screenplay reflects the concerns of the American people of that time in regards to matters such as truth and liberty in what they believed to be a free society.With a running time of only 80 minutes, Silver Lode moved along at a really good clip. Its cast included John Payne, Dan Duryea, Harry Carey Jr., and Lizabeth Scott.

vitaleralphlouis THE SILVER LODE is a pretty good Technicolor western from RKO. The story is good, the cast is top notch, and the photography is particularly fine. This movie is supposedly an anti-Senator McCarthy parable, and if so I'll rate it an "F" and No Stars, but the idea this is about McCarthy is nonsense.John Payne and Lizabeth Scott have their wedding interrupted by a US Marshal (named McCarty, not McCarthy) and played by dependable bad guy Dan Duryea on a charge of murder. Duryea is a fake, and it seems he's more interested in a certain $20,000 than the untimely shooting of his brother. This "parable" obviously has exactly zero to do with investigating Communist infiltration of the film industry during the Cold War Era.One of the most cowardly things a filmmaker, author or journalist can do is to attack Senator McCarthy. McCarthy was a war hero who offended Hollywood's lefties by daring to expose the many Communists in their industry --- as verified by testimony from the much-honored director Elia Kazan. They took their revenge out by attacking the man with mountain-upon-mountain of cheap shots and lies for the past 50 years; and the lies continue today.Almost any American, not just the left, many otherwise well informed people, believe the lies, if only through sheer abundance. To pile more lies on top of this is sheer cowardice -- as is the idea of re-defining this 1953 western in terms of their evil and vindictive spin.Rent this one and enjoy it for the good western that it is.