Ride the High Country

Sam Peckinpah is among the greatest directors of westerns—right up there with Howard Hawks and John Ford. While not as virtuosic a film as his Wild Bunch, this elegiac tale of two aging gunfighters is a great film. Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott play two ex-lawmen entrusted with bringing a large sum of money back to the city from an isolated mining town. Along the way they encounter a young hellion, an unwilling bride, and a very mean family of miscreants.