Michael Winner's "The Lawman" reveals that a sheriff - traditional officer responsible for law and order, symbol of virtue and right - is 'not' always morally excellent and virtuous or that his prey thoroughly bad...
Burt Lancaster is cast as a merciless avenger, unmoved by love or pity, determined to one end: Exterminate the opposition...
The criminals here are, in fact, some law breakers, drunken cowboys - who by bad luck - have killed an old man during a rough enthusiastic drinking bout...
Lancaster - blind to his faults, unwilling to judge or to be less severe, and with no intention to arrest - hunts his prey down, one by one, until the last man...
There is no poetic eloquence here, no tension as the two protagonists walk slowly towards their duel, no feeling that right is victorious, no good has conquered evil, no decisive clash to capture the audience's imagination... This is pure brutality: Gratuitous graphic sequences - sickening and revolting - of destroyed shoulders and collapsed faces... Uncalled details of death that may damage the sonorous knell of the 'classic Western' with its ideal behavior and precise rules traditionally observed...
The Western showdown is strictly ritual, quick, clean and purely emotional... The outcome predictable... The moment of suspense exciting as anything the cinema has ever produced...
The showdown in "The Lawman" is disturbing in the way of vision... It follows on in the tradition of Palance/Elisha Cook Jr. ultimate confrontation in "Shane," and excels Sam Peckinpah's commitment to an ideal of self-expression through violent death... It may well mean that a film like "Shane," "High Noon," "Vera Cruz," or "The Fastest Gun Alive," can never be made again...
