Law and Order: A Western That Knows Its Way Around a Dust Bowl

Is it worth the watch?

If you're a fan of old westerns, especially the kind that feel like they were filmed in someone's backyard, you’ll probably find something to enjoy here. If you prefer your pacing tight and your dialogue natural, you might want to skip it. It's not reinventing the wheel, but it is a sturdy, if slightly rickety, wagon.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Law and Order (1932) through its definitive frames.

Walter Huston is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here. You can tell he’s the only one who realized this could be more than just a routine genre exercise. When he walks into a room, the whole vibe changes, which is a nice break from the extras standing around looking confused.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Law and Order (1932) through its definitive frames.

The town of Tombstone feels… small. Like, suspiciously small. Sometimes you get the sense that if you turned the camera ten degrees to the left, you'd see a guy holding a sandwich and a boom mic. It’s charming in a weird way, though.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Law and Order (1932) through its definitive frames.

Oddly Specific Notes

• The sound of the spurs is *incredibly* loud. It’s like the sound mixer had a personal vendetta against silence.
• There’s a scene in the saloon that goes on forever, and nobody really seems to know what to do with their hands.
• The facial hair in this movie deserves its own billing in the credits. Honestly, the mustaches are doing better acting than half the background cast.

It’s not quite as weird as Aelita, the Queen of Mars, obviously, but it has that same feeling of being from a time where movies were still figuring out how to be, well, movies. It’s not smooth. It’s not pretty. But it is definitely a thing that happened.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Law and Order (1932) through its definitive frames.

I found myself zoning out during the dialogue scenes but leaning in whenever a horse showed up. There is something about the way they frame the wide shots that makes the desert look like a character itself. It’s probably just because they didn't have anywhere else to film, but it works. 🤠

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Law and Order (1932) through its definitive frames.

The movie gets noticeably better when it stops trying to explain the plot and just lets the guns do the talking. The final showdown is surprisingly quick, which is a nice change of pace from modern movies that drag out the finale for twenty minutes.

It’s a bit like watching Pollyanna but with more revolvers and less optimism. You know exactly what’s going to happen, and that’s perfectly fine. Sometimes you just want to see a guy with a badge tell some bad guys to pack their bags.