# 126 High Noon (1952)

This is my first review on one of the Top 250 Movies, and I already know that this is not going to be an easy one. Western is not particularly my favorite genre, so this film was a little hard for me to appreciate.

In High Noon Gary Cooper plays a marshal who goes by the name of Will Kane. The movie begins with him getting married and getting ready to leave the town, when he finds out that an outlaw whom he thought was to be hanged, has been freed, and will arrive at the town's train station at high noon. Kane makes a decision to stand up and fight against the gang, even if he has to do it all by himself.

The movie delivers a message about a man doing what he is supposed to do, it's about courage and doing what is right. May be this idea would seem more appealing to me if I was a man, but from a woman's point of view, I would like my man to stand by my side instead of chasing bandits. I won't go into the political background of this film, I'll just say that it's full of allegory, so for those who can read between the lines and know the US history of the 20th century, it's probably a very interesting movie.

To me the best thing about the movie is that the action takes place in real time. The runtime is 85 minutes, and the film portrays the events that take place between 10:35 am and noon. No surprise it won an Academy Award in "Best Film Editing" category. There is not much action in the movie, which I think is good because the 1950s action looks pretty archaic to me. The music score was written by Dimitri Tiomkin, a Russian (or Ukrainian to be more exact) composer who won two Oscars for this movie (Best Original Song and Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture).

I won't argue with those who say that there are no flaws in this movie, but it's hard for me to understand what's so special about it. It's a good film, but I think it's a little bit overrated.

Favorite quote: "If you don't know, I can't explain it to you".
Interesting fact: High Noon is reportedly Bill Clinton's all-time favorite movie.