High Noon Review

Nothing beats a good western and I'd heard so much about High Noon over the years. I finally rented it and learned for myself: High Noon is an excellent movie.

Marshall Will Kane (Gary Cooper) gets married and resigns on his last day as marshall in the frontier town of Hadleyville. Within minutes, he learns that Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald) has been paroled from prison and is on the noon train back to Hadleyville. Miller is a cold-blooded killer who previously terrorized the town until Kane caught him and put him away. Now Miller has been released and there's only about an hour and 15 minutes before the noon train arrives.

The town fathers tell Kane to flee with his bride Amy (Grace Kelly), but the good marshall is a lawman to the core and he can't leave the town to face Frank Miller and his gang alone. As the clock ticks away, Marshall Kane returns to town and tries to assemble men who will be temporary deputies. Everywhere he goes, the men of Hadleyville are cowards. They either hide from the marshall or they have weasely excuses. The only one who sincerely volunteers is a 14-year-old boy, and he's too young. Even Kane's new wife, Amy, begs him to leave town and let someone else deal with the Miller gang. She's a Quaker and abhors all violence, and it turns out that she has a good reason to feel that way. Still, Will Kane persists as the clock moves ever closer to noon.

Will anyone help the marshall? Will Frank Miller and his men ravage the town that sent him to prison? Who will be left standing at the end of the day?

High Noon is a heckuva movie. Made in 1952, it stands up very well today, despite some old-fashioned acting by the excellent cast. Gary Cooper was outstanding as Will Kane (and won an Oscar for his performance) and his face increasingly shows the tension as the clock ticks toward noon. As the climactic scene arrived and good and evil faced each other in the dusty streets of Hadleyville, I honestly did not know how High Noon was going to end. That is highly unusual in a movie. The ending was excellent, by the way.

There were a couple things about High Noon that bothered me just a little. First, at 84 minutes, this is a short movie. I don't know what could be added without hurting the wonderful buildup of tension through the film, but you should know that this is a short movie. Second is the fact that Will Kane, played by 51-year-old Gary Cooper, marries Amy Fowler, played by 22-year-old Grace Kelly. There is nothing wrong with Kelly's performance, but couldn't the producers have found an actress who was a little closer to Cooper's age? Perhaps, say... 35-years-old? As the two got married at the beginning, I said out loud, "She looks 22 and he looks 50." Then I looked it up and found out that it was actually 22 and 51! It's not a huge thing, and Grace Kelly did a good job, but the age difference bugged me everytime I saw the two together. One final gripe was that the excellent title song ("Don't Forsake Me" by Tex Ritter) was repeated over and over through the film. Some other music scattered throughout would have been nice.

Quibbles aside, High Noon is an excellent movie that deserves to be seen today. In fact, it should be required viewing today. There is no profanity or nudity, but the tension and Marshall Kane's internal struggle are things that will take an older teen to comprehend. Although there are bodies in the dirt at the end, the gunplay is mostly bloodless. Kids age 10 or older could watch this movie, although they probably won't understand it fully until they're a little older.

I strongly recommend High Noon. I can't quite award it five stars, but High Noon is a strong four-star movie.