Word: ryders
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WHEN YOU COMIN' BACK, RED RYDER...
...When You Coming Back, Red Ryder, Gortner plays a crazed Vietnam vet who terrorizes a bunch of people in a New Mexico diner in 1968. Both the time frame and the tripped-out pomposity bring to mind the sixties marijuana generation. Background music is provided by the likes of B.B. King and Tammy Wynette, and I kept thinking of those late-night stoned raves in which you immortalize your first love affair on film in your head and try to match its moments to your favorite songs: "And then, after our fourth fight, when I'm crossing Boylston Street...
Much of When You Coming Back Red Ryder is amateurish in just this sense. Brilliant analyses of the universe hatched in the wee hours pale by day. The movie is full of cloddishly conceived ideas which could have brilliant if any one of them had been followed through in a disciplined...
...most of the action takes place in one room, in which a group of diverse types is held hostage by one violent man. Both are set in roadside cafes in the Southwest. But many of the elements which made The Petrified Forest a great film are missing in Red Ryder. The most important of these is restraint. Bogey was actually at his hammiest in Petrified Forest, but he communicated with the economy of a professional. Gortner's performance, for all its Bacchanalian intensity, lacks just this sort of professionalism. We cannot help but admire his characterization. Half demented encounter group...
...characters except Gortner's are themselves cliches; the unsatisfied wife, the frustrated greaser, the fat waitress, the nice-guy motel-keeper. The characters line up almost exactly like those in The Petrified Forest, but in that film they were three-dimensional. In Red Ryder the characters are all foils for Teddy's contempt. None of them are allowed to do anything but whimper or get hysterical. When Red Ryder finally goes after Teddy and shoots him down, the film has already lost us. The final act of bravery, unlike Leslie Howard's in Petrified Forest, makes little impact, because...