Mann's direction is immaculate, making Reginald Rose's clearly allegorical, and sometimes forced, screenplay seem even better than it is.

Anthony Mann's terrific final western is a potent examination of one man's battle against his own darker impulses.

Cooper gives a characteristically virile performance, his dominance of the outlaws quietly believable, while London achieves some touching and convincing moments in a difficult role.

The great western director Anthony Mann and aging western icon Gary Cooper teamed up for the first and only time in [this] stark frontier drama of a trio of train passengers stranded in the desert after a railway holdup.