The title character, Jake Wade, is a former outlaw who has not only turned over a new leaf and gone straight but has actually become a lawman himself; he has become the marshal of the town of Cold Stream. Despite his conversion to the paths of righteousness, however, Jake believes that he owes a debt of honour to his former (and still unreformed) partner, Clint Hollister, who once rescued him from jail. When Jake hears that Clint himself has been arrested, he helps Clint to escape.
As they say, no good deed goes unpunished. Clint is not satisfied with being freed from jail; he also wants the loot from the gang's last robbery, which Jake has buried. He tracks Jake down and demands that Jake show him where the money is hidden. When Jake refuses, Clint and his gang kidnap his girlfriend Peggy to force him to comply.
There is a particularly fine performance from Richard Widmark as the villainous, almost psychotic, Clint, a man obsessed with the missing loot who will do anything, up to and including killing, to get it. The other members of Clint's gang are also individualised; Ortero, for example, still retains some traces of decency, whereas Rennie is just as ruthless and sadistic as Clint, if perhaps less willing to risk his own life to recover the money.
Robert Taylor has come in for some criticism on this board, but the role did not call for showy acting, Jake is far from being a clean-cut Western hero. He is a man whose conscience is troubled by his criminal past, especially as a boy was killed in the gang's last robbery. His decision not only to turn his back on a life of crime but to reinvent himself as a lawman, fighting the sort of people he once was himself, is his way of trying to make amends. Yet freeing himself of the burden of the past is more difficult than he imagined. I could imagine this storyline as the plot of one of the Mann/Stewart Westerns, which were noted for their psychological depth.
There is a tense climax to the film when Jake, Peggy, Clint and the gang are ambushed in the ghost town where the money is buried by a war party of Comanche Indians. The final shoot-out recalls that in "Gunfight at the OK Corral", also directed by John Sturges, from the previous year. (In reality that famous shootout was over in a matter of seconds, but Sturges turns it into the drawn-our climax to his movie).
Sturges made some of the all-time great Westerns such as "Bad Day at Black Rock", "Gunfight at the OK Corral" and "The Magnificent Seven", as well as one of the all-time great war films, "The Great Escape". I wouldn't rate "The Law and Jake Wade" quite as highly as any of those masterpieces, but it is nevertheless a very decent Western.
As they say, no good deed goes unpunished. Clint is not satisfied with being freed from jail; he also wants the loot from the gang's last robbery, which Jake has buried. He tracks Jake down and demands that Jake show him where the money is hidden. When Jake refuses, Clint and his gang kidnap his girlfriend Peggy to force him to comply.
There is a particularly fine performance from Richard Widmark as the villainous, almost psychotic, Clint, a man obsessed with the missing loot who will do anything, up to and including killing, to get it. The other members of Clint's gang are also individualised; Ortero, for example, still retains some traces of decency, whereas Rennie is just as ruthless and sadistic as Clint, if perhaps less willing to risk his own life to recover the money.
Robert Taylor has come in for some criticism on this board, but the role did not call for showy acting, Jake is far from being a clean-cut Western hero. He is a man whose conscience is troubled by his criminal past, especially as a boy was killed in the gang's last robbery. His decision not only to turn his back on a life of crime but to reinvent himself as a lawman, fighting the sort of people he once was himself, is his way of trying to make amends. Yet freeing himself of the burden of the past is more difficult than he imagined. I could imagine this storyline as the plot of one of the Mann/Stewart Westerns, which were noted for their psychological depth.
There is a tense climax to the film when Jake, Peggy, Clint and the gang are ambushed in the ghost town where the money is buried by a war party of Comanche Indians. The final shoot-out recalls that in "Gunfight at the OK Corral", also directed by John Sturges, from the previous year. (In reality that famous shootout was over in a matter of seconds, but Sturges turns it into the drawn-our climax to his movie).
Sturges made some of the all-time great Westerns such as "Bad Day at Black Rock", "Gunfight at the OK Corral" and "The Magnificent Seven", as well as one of the all-time great war films, "The Great Escape". I wouldn't rate "The Law and Jake Wade" quite as highly as any of those masterpieces, but it is nevertheless a very decent Western.