The Wonderful Country

Although a mood of melancholy or worse pervades this excellent western, it remains an honest and hard-hitting look at the realistic adventures of Martin Brady (Robert Mitchum -- who produced). Brady fled to Mexico while still quite young in order to avoid prison in the U.S. -- he had killed his father's murderer. After years spent working as a gunman for a wealthy "padron," he hates white Americans but has to go north to get weapons. Once on the wrong side of the border, he gets into trouble with U.S. Army for not helping them hunt down Apaches. But the people he meets in a small town, one a European immigrant, begin to change his black-and-white view of the world. Meanwhile, he and Ellen Colton (Julie London), the unhappy wife of an army major, begin to fall in love. Several more adventures and a tragedy or two affect the unlikely couple's future -- ultimately for the better. Baseball hero "Satchel" Paige shows up in a cameo role, leading an Afro-American unit of the U.S. army. Mexican star Pedro Armendariz is Brady's boss, Governor Castro.