While I would never say that "Run For Cover" is a great western, it is a lot better than you'd expect--especially with its odd cast. I think the reason it works for me is that the film is very difficult to predict and is very unusual. In other words, unlike 98% of all westerns, this is NOT formulaic nor is it predictable. For these reasons alone, it's worth seeing.

As I mentioned above, the cast is odd. While Jimmy Cagney did a few westerns earlier in his career, they really weren't all that good because his brash Eastern persona just seems completely out of place in the West. However, here he isn't bad at all--and his part is much more understated than usual. As for the second lead, John Derek, he is simply pretty--and nothing like a guy you'd expect in a western. But, he's not bad in the film.

The plot is very strange and I don't want to give too much of it away because it would ruin the film. It begins with Cagney and Derek meeting up on the trail. In a funny scene that turns deadly serious, the two are shooting at a hawk (I assume it was a stunt hawk) and some guys on the nearby train think they are being robbed--so they toss the money out--right into the path of Derek and Cagney! I say it's deadly serious, though, because soon a posse shows up and shoots at the two without even asking questions! Derek is hit and not surprisingly, Cagney is darned angry! The town feels a bit bad for what's happened and they offer Cagney the job of sheriff. He's mad...but eventually agrees to take the job and makes Derek his deputy. Where it all goes from there...see it for yourself. Suffice to say that Cagney and Derek both have big secrets that only come out later. Well done all around--I assumed, incorrectly, that this film was just another western--and I am thrilled I was wrong.

By the way...watch the final scene between Cagney and Derek. It's incredible!

RUN FOR COVER is a somewhat bloated Hollywood western of 1955, directed by that maestro of the genre, Nicholas Ray. It's one of his lesser movies that suffers from a script which more often than not descends into pedestrianism in the dragged-out romantic sub-plot involving a farmer's wife. The unusual opening has an innocent guy mistaken for a train robber before turning the tables and becoming town sheriff instead. James Cagney, aged so much that he's barely recognisable, is okay as the hero, but the script gives him little meat to work with throughout and the excitement level is low.

Nicholas Ray will be remembered for "The Lusty Men," "Johnny Guitar," "Run for Cover," and "The True Story of Jesse James."

With a slight echo of "High Noon," the film is Cagney's first Western, shot in stunning Technicolor and VistaVision, since Lloyd Bacon's "Oklahoma Kid" in 1939...

Cagney was beginning to show his age, but his performance is colorful as always... It is interesting to remark that Grant Withers whom Cagney had supported in his film debut ("Sinner's Holiday," 1930) and his third movie ("Other Men's Women", 1931) is in his support as Gentry....

Released from a six-year prison term for a crime he did not commit, Cagney goes West, where he meets John Derek...

Riding along, they innocently become involved in a train robbery and are later ambushed by a posse... Derek's leg is smashed and is taken to Viveca Lindfors' farm where she nurses him and falls in love with Cagney...

The townsfolk offer Cagney the tin star, and he appoints Derek (who is now a cripple),as his deputy...

Derek's bitterness over his bad accident separates the two men in different directions and soon are seen on opposite side in a fight involving Grant Withers' widely known gang and a group of Indians...