The Naked Spur

I'm not a huge fan of westerns but Anthony Mann's 'The Naked Spur' with Jimmy Stewart (one of three westerns they made together) is brilliant. Stewart plays a morally ambiguous character, something that seems eerie against his all-American personae. I'd thought that only Hitchcock had utilized this aspect of Stewart, but Mann does just as good a job. The end, far from being triumphant as is normal in the genre, is strangely ambiguous, with the couple riding off through a clear cut forest.