From the Rental Vault: Quests

Somewhat lesser-known than the John Ford-John Wayne partnership, the Anthony Mann-James Stewart team up also produced some of the best work of both men, especially in the genre of the Western. The 1953 drama The Naked Spur was the third of the five Westerns they did together, and was another example of Stewart stretching beyond his easygoing earnestness into some deep psychological and moral waters.

Howard Kemp (Stewart) is pursuing the murderer Ben Vandergroat (Robert Ryan) for the bounty, and finally tracks him down with the uninvited but necessary help of dishonorably discharged cavalry lieutenant Roy Anderson (Ralph Meeker) and hardscrabble failed prospector Jesse Tate (Millard Mitchell). Ben reveals that Howard is no lawman as he has implied, but instead a bounty hunter who just wants the $5,000 reward for Ben's capture. Roy and Jesse claim a third of the reward and insist they will accompany Howard. Ben immediately starts to set them against each other, building suspicion and mistrust using their greed. He also uses the presence of Lina Patch (Janet Leigh), the daughter of another outlaw, whom he has been protecting since her father was killed. His goal is to reduce the number of his captors or to set them against each other enough he can find a way to escape before he is returned to Abilene and hanged.

Mann shot Spur on location in Colorado, with only a cave scene done inside on a stage. The early spring setting allows for the contrast of greening plants and the remnants of snow banks, signaling the mix of life and frozen deadness inside Kemp's own spirit. Stewart demonstrates he was always more than just a kindly fellow, going from brimful of rage to sad regret and bewildered pain and back again during the journey. Ryan excels at Ben's Mephistopholean joy as he plays with the other's heads, doing it seemingly as much for the fun as for his escape plan. Leigh, up until then working mostly in ingenue roles, is no shrinking violet or just a foil for the men. Although her role is a little sketchier and less independent than a modern audience would like, she still has her own motivation and action within the parameters of the story.

Today Jimmy Stewart is known as much for his morally conflicted roles with Alfred Hitchcock as he is for the upstanding characters of It's a Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But it seems likely that without transitioning as he did with his work in Mann's movies and especially their Westerns, he would not have painted with gray nearly so well as he did with Hitch.

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Towards the end of the Ming Dynasty in 17th century China, a new young emperor has decided to end the secret rule of palace advisor Wei. Wei gets wind of the threat and escapes. The emperor sets the Imperial Assassins, his secret police, to search for Wei and kill him. A high officer in the secret police gives the task to three skilled but impoverished agents, who track Wei down but are then tempted by his vast wealth. How they handle the offer of the bribe and its consequences is the story of Brotherhood of Blades, a 2014 martial arts movie that was well-reviewed on release but fared poorly at the box office.

The three leads fall into familiar types -- there is a grizzled veteran, an innocent newcomer and a hero in his prime. Each has a secret need for the kind of money that Wei offers. The veteran does not have the bribes to purchase a promotion to which he has long been entitled but can't get because richer men buy it first. The hero has a favorite courtesan whose freedom he wishes to purchase so they can begin a life together. And the newcomer has a secret that another person knows, and that other person is a ruthless blackmailer.

Blades plays out pretty much as expected; its strength is in its well-choreographed fighting and its solid if uninspired three main cast members rather than in very many surprising twists and turns. Webs of corruption will ensnare the poor but honest soldiers, high-level officials will manipulate and scheme, and so on and so forth. Only Dong-xue Li as a mercenary blackmailer and Qing Ye as a druggist's daughter offer much depth or anything surprising in their characters.

But those strengths of competent performance, unadorned story and well-executed action set pieces make for a good afternoon diversion and something of an interesting meditation on what it might really cost to get the one thing you want more than anything.