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Surely you know: Marshal Will Kane, newly married, newly retired from office, and about to ride off to a new life, learns that his sworn enemy is out of prison and returning on the noon train to kill him. Kane and his bride--a Quaker who rejects violence--flee as the townsfolk urge. But Kane can't live with that and turns back--only to find himself deserted by both wife and community and left to face four deadly killers alone. That's the premise of High Noon, a 1952 independent film and seminal "adult" Western that became an instant classic. It's also the plot of this 2000 made-for-TV movie, produced by the wife (now widow) of the man who produced the original, Stanley Kramer. Is there any project more pointless than remaking a classic--especially one that's part of the national consciousness, not only a cinematic but also a moral and political touchstone? Director Rod Hardy has discouraged comparisons by eschewing almost everything that distinguished the original: the music, the theme song, the expressionistic camera angles and ticking clocks and metronomic cutting underscoring the real-time suspense. Enough of Carl Foreman's screenplay has been retained that he's credited as cowriter of the teleplay despite having died in 1984. But the urgency of that screenplay is missing--the underlying allegory of the conformism, betrayal, and fear of the blacklist that had the Hollywood community in a death grip. (Foreman himself was soon blacklisted.)
Tom Skerritt gets the marshal's dignity and exasperation but conveys none of the anguish and vulnerability that made Gary Cooper's heroism all the more moving. Otherwise the cast is a study in drabness: Susanna Thompson stiff and peevish in the Grace Kelly part, Reed Diamond a punk substitute for Lloyd Bridges as Kane's envious deputy, a cast of anonymous Canadians filling in blandly for a gallery of legendary character actors. Only Maria Conchita Alonso and Michael Madsen get within hailing distance of, respectively, Katy Jurado as Kane's former mistress and Ian MacDonald as the malevolent Frank Miller. --Richard T. Jameson
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