Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Run for Cover Blu-ray Movie Review

How do you follow up a film like 'Johnny Guitar'?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 24, 2012

Lovers of the outré are salivating over the announcement by Olive Films that they will be releasing one of the oddest “westerns” ever filmed, Nicholas Ray’s 1954 Joan Crawford –Mercedes McCambridge subtext-fest Johnny Guitar. Sandwiched in between Johnny Guitar and what is arguably Ray’s most lasting screen accomplishment, 1955’s Rebel Without a Cause, came another odd western by the director, 1955’s Run for Cover, a piece that lacks Johnny Guitar’s patently weird combination of ideas and layers but which in its own way is anachronistic, if perhaps not quite to the level of the Crawford film. Featuring a rare later career western turn by James Cagney (whose previous entry in the genre had been 1939’s Oklahoma Kid), as well as a host of nice supporting performances by an “eclectic” cast including John Derek (Bo’s future husband), Viveca Lindfors and Oscar Humanitarian Award namesake Jean Hersholt, not to mention about to be Best Actor Oscar winner Ernest Borgnine in a minor but instrumental role, the film offers the sort of character driven drama that would become a mainstay of westerns for the rest of the decade and well into the sixties. Ray trades in the studio bound feel of Johnny Guitar for an expansive, often outdoor shot film that makes the most of its VistaVision capabilities, a scenic aspect which helps to at least partially offset some less than artful story development. The mid-fifties saw the rise of what were often called Adult Westerns, and while Run for Cover makes a valiant attempt to inject some of the ruminative elements that would make the Anthony Mann – James Stewart collaborations so memorable, it feels and plays much more like a traditional oater with some unusual elements thrown in for a little added flavor.

Cagney plays Matt Dow, an aging cowboy with a past (of course), who meets young ‘un Davey Bishop (Derek) at a watering hole in a picturesque canyon. After a tense interchange which effortlessly segues into friendship (a kind of emotional roller coaster this film will revisit repeatedly, to deleterious effect), Davey and Matt head off together toward Davey’s hometown of Madison, which Matt is interested in checking out to see if he wants to settle down there. In one of the more ludicrous set ups imaginable, Matt and Davey stop next to a railroad track and shoot at a menacing hawk that’s been tailing them overhead, right as the train gets to them. It turns out this particular train has been robbed by gunmen right at that point previously, and the trepidatious “guards” panic, deciding to simply throw the money bags off the train rather than risk getting attacked.

Once the train men get back to Madison, they run shrieking through town that they’ve been held up again, which sets the Sheriff off on a manhunt with an eager posse. The vagaries of frontier justice are nicely essayed in this segment, as the townsmen all adopt a “shoot first, ask questions later” attitude which ends up seriously wounding Davey and leaving Matt with a bloody head. That in turns sets up the central dramatic arc of Run for Cover, where a gimp leg caused by Davey’s injury leads to that character’s increasingly shaded emotional tenor, while Matt in turn assumes the role of Sheriff after the original Sheriff’s mishandling of the supposed train robbery leads to his dismissal. In the meantime, Matt has started a-courtin’ a middle aged Swedish woman named Helga (Lindfors) whose farm has served as the recovery spot for Davey. (Hersholt plays Helga’s curt but lovable father.)

The final piece of the puzzle is added once Madison and the surrounding country are endangered by some marauding bad guys (including Borgnine), and it turns out Matt may have had a less than honorable connection with them in his hidden past. Run for Cover therefore wants to ply a kind of intimate character study within the vast expansive scenery of the American West. Ray manages a decent middle ground here, emphasizing several character evolutions rather well while at the same time losing none of the sweep and scope (no pun intended) offered by a then innovative widescreen process.

What hampers Run for Cover more than anything, though, is its patently odd emotional lurches. A perfect example of this comes early in the film, after Davey has discovered his leg is permanently injured. He has fallen to the bedroom floor, and Matt, who has more or less taken Davey under his wing as an ostensible son (Matt’s real son died several years previously), boorishly walks in and tries to bully Davey into literally standing on his own two feet. That in turn leads to a kind of hyperbolic showdown where Davey throws a chair at a mirror and then falls over again. Matt retreats to the cabin’s living room, where he commiserates with Helga, who tries to comfort Matt by telling him he was only doing what he felt was best for Davey. Then without missing a beat, we hear Davey calling to them, and a cut to the bedroom reveals Davey standing by himself and broad smiles all around for the three characters. This may sound like a perfectly logical turn of events, except that it happens in probably a minute and a half of screen time, with absolutely no internal logic to the manic emotional highs and lows of at least Matt and Davey, if not of Helga.

Run for Cover is, like Johnny Guitar, a rather weird western, albeit one wrapped in more traditional garb. Cagney gives a good performance as a conflicted man trying to do the right thing under difficult circumstances, and Derek is also quite good in a role that sees his character darken perceptibly as the film evolves. Ray keeps things moving along quite briskly (too briskly at times, some would argue) and the film is undeniably very scenic. It’s a cause for celebration for a certain class of film lover when a lesser known title like this is released at all, let alone in high definition. (It’s a little mind boggling that Paramount had an HD master for this, as well as the two Byron Haskin directed westerns Olive is releasing along with Run for Cover, in its assets catalog.) This may in fact be second tier Nicholas Ray, but it’s an interesting film with its own small scale pleasures on tap which should be appreciated by lovers of the “Adult Western” subgenre.

A couple of tangential notes a propos of not much, but which might interest some. First of all, those with PS3s will notice that the thumbnail for Run for Cover is mislabeled as Silver City, another western which streets on the same day from Olive. A bit more tangentially, I spent a great deal of time watching Cagney in this film and wondering who he was reminding me of. The answer suddenly burst into my mind and made me laugh out loud: at this stage of Cagney's career, he looked amazingly like Survivor über-villain Russell Hantz.

Run for Cover Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Run for Cover is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Olive Films licenses masters provided to them by Paramount and so far Paramount has generally been doing a great job of simply transferring the film elements without a lot of (if indeed any) digital tweaking. Run for Cover is one of the nicer looking Paramount catalog titles Olive has handled, perhaps due in part to its VistaVision roots. The image is decently sharp in close-ups, but tends toward softness in midrange shots. The elements here are in surprisingly good shape, with only a few minor blemishes dotting the landscape. There is some noticeable age related color fading, with a tendency toward the brown side of things, but overall the elements have retained a great deal of their original luster.

Run for Cover Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Run for Cover features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono mix which is decently full in the mid- and high ranges, but which tends not to support much sonic verve in the low end. That said, the ubiquitous gun shots sound surprisingly fulsome and Howard Jackson's nicely effective score also comes through with above average fullness. Dialogue is always clean and clear and the track really has no egregious damage of any kind to report. This isn't a "wow" audio mix by any stretch of the imagination, but it adequately reproduces the original narrow theatrical rendering of the track, and even occasionally has moments of relative spaciousness to recommend it (listen carefully in the opening scene where Matt and Davey meet for some nice ambient environmental effects for a good example).

Run for Cover Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

As continues to be the case with most of these Olive Films releases, no supplements of any kind are included.

Run for Cover Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The fifties were a halcyon era for the western on both the big screen and perhaps especially on television. That glut of material meant for highly variable results, and Run for Cover is neither the most exciting nor the most innovative western ever filmed. Still, it's competent on just about every level, and it offers two nice turns from Cagney and Derek in the leading roles, as well as some equally effective supporting performances from Lindfors, Borgnine and Hersholt. Ray always had an impeccable visual sense, and he brings a certain sweep to this tale of two men dealing with questions of their own morality, either past or present. This Blu-ray offers solid video and decent audio, and despite following in the Olive tradition of no supplements, it comes Recommended.