Welcome to Hard Times

It is very hard to like Henry Fonda's character as the pacifists antihero which is the role he is playing as a lawyer named Mayor Will Blue in the tumbleweed town called Hard Times. Watching how the seasoned tough guy actor Aldo Ray play the bully/rapist overpower the entire townsfolk as a one man out of control mob, how could anyone like the "character: Mayor Will Blue who refuses to confront the mean SOB who is terrorizing his small town.

Just a few years later in 1973 Clint Eastwood played another antihero stranger without a given name in the classic film "High Plains Drifter" with the audience accepting much greater empathy when the town was also burned to the ground and Clint went after the bad guys with a vengeance. I understand why many viewers did not enjoy this Burt Kennedy directed film, and I am sure director/actor Clint Eastwood learned from the mistakes from Henry Fonda's 1967 film Welcome to Hard Times.

My one criticism of this film was the fact that there seemed to be only one young boy in the entire town and how can any town flourish without a school and a church? Very few westerns are acknowledged as classics without a make believe town having school aged children, a church as well as the always standard livery stable.

Even without the bare necessities of a small western start up town I still liked and understood the message which is that one way or another, bully's have to be confronted and ultimately defeated even if it means the sacrifice of a few good men to save the lives and livelihood of many.

I give the film a decent 7 out of 10 IMDB rating.