This is a landmark western--a powerful, haunting western that gets inside you like termites to a tree. Featuring dark, complex performances from Henry Fonda, Richard Widmark, Anthony Quinn, and Dorothy Malone, Dmytryk has crafted a film that must stand alongside the best of Ford, Hawks, and Mann.
There are no heroes in the town of Warlock, only victims and those that take advantage of victims. The town is being ravaged by a group of cowboys that take law into their own hands and take pride in knocking off every new sheriff that stands up to them. Enter Fonda, a gun-slinging marshal hired by the town council to do what a legal sheriff cannot--kill the killers.
In at least a hundred westerns before and after, Fonda is our hero. But in Warlock, we slowly see that Fonda is only in this for the money. He is no better than those he has been hired to dispose of. Next we look to Quinn, Fonda's crippled sidekick who has saved his life a dozen times and lives only to protect and promote the man he loves like a brother. Perhaps he will be this film's conscience--step in and bring honour to a place where none exists. Yet soon enough, he too, is exposed as a fraud, obsessed by a woman he can't have and willing to kill anyone that stands between them.
Our hero must then be Widmark, the latest sheriff to take office. Some hero--he is a man who, years earlier commited an act of terror as heinous as any could conceive, and is now seeking redemption. This is the type of anti-hero we won't find in westerns for another 5 years and in Hollywood westerns for another 10. He is so captivated by the thought of defending the law he once mocked, he risks his life, his brother's, and his first true love, Dorothy Malone.
There are few speeches in "Warlock." People talk like they belong with the dust and tumbleweeds and nobody stops to explain themselves. With a couple of audacious cuts in the opening ten minutes, the filmmakers immediately establish that we're entering a place where you're never going to feel comfortable. Perhaps influenced by the jump cutting of the French new-wave emerging at the time, Dmytryk does not completely jump, but he does distract--and the same effect is created. Motivations will be unclear, loyalties will be questioned, and no one will be trusted.
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