Complete credited cast: | |||
Joel McCrea | ... | Wes McQueen | |
Virginia Mayo | ... | Colorado Carson | |
Dorothy Malone | ... | Julie Ann Winslow | |
Henry Hull | ... | Fred Winslow | |
John Archer | ... | Reno Blake | |
James Mitchell | ... | Duke Harris | |
Morris Ankrum | ... | United States Marshal | |
Basil Ruysdael | ... | Dave Rickard | |
Frank Puglia | ... | Brother Tomas | |
Ian Wolfe | ... | Homer Wallace | |
Harry Woods | ... | Pluthner | |
Houseley Stevenson | ... | Prospector |
Outlaw Wes McQueen is sprung from jail to help pull one last railroad job. He doesn't like his new partners - except dance-hall girl Colorado - and anyway fancies Julie Ann newly arrived from the east to set up home with her father. Maybe time to get out. Unfortunately he also has a $10,000 reward on his head, dead or alive. Written by Jeremy Perkins {J-26}
Colorado Territory is undoubtedly one of the best films directed by Raoul Walsh.In fact it's sort of a remake of a film Walsh directed 10 years before this one High Sierra with Humphrey Bogart and Ida Lupino.
Colorado Territory's story revolves around a very sympathetic outlaw Wes McQueen (Joel McCrea) who is finally caught and put in jail but obviously not for a very long time, cause his former companions devise a plan to rob the train and are most certainly in need of him to be able to pull it off successfully. So they help him to escape. After Wes succeeds in doing so he finds a refuge in a distant abandoned village in the mountains where he meets his partners together with a spirited and beautiful woman Colorado (Virginia Mayo) who ends up falling in love with him not knowing that his heart already belongs to another very different woman Julie Ann (Dorothy Malone) who in her turn, doesn't know about Wes McQueen being one of the most sought after outlaws in the west. The question now is not who stays with the girl, but who stays with the guy in the most fateful and poignant film's ending. 8/10