The Sundowners

An unusual opening title identifies the cattle brands of the Texas ranchers on whose land this was filmed. Templeton’s steady, close work pays off in the fantastically beautiful abstractions he gets among the sinuosities of a windshorn and waterworn canyon in a large-scale shootout. The style is an evocation of Billy the Kid and the range wars achieved with a terse ambiguity in some blood-curdling situations.

A precursor to Chisum and in some shots a model for True Grit.