The Ox-Bow Incident

This is a magnificently crafted film. The tragedy of the events still carry great impact, even after 60 years. This a truly moving film that should by all means be a part of every collection, even if you don't care particularly for westerns.


Admirable Drama in Xenophobic Small Town Western...   June 28, 2005
Kim Anehall (Chicago, IL USA)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful

The Ox-Bow Incident displays a very real situation with ordinary people making rash decisions based on feelings, prejudice, and group dynamics. The story takes place in Nevada where the inhabitants of a small village take the law into their own hands in the year of 1885. There were thousands of small towns such as this one spread out throughout the west of the Mississippi. Each town had their own elected sheriff that upheld the law, and often with a bias toward the townsfolk. Strangers did not often come through small towns and these strangers often experienced some level of xenophobia, which is even noticeable in the beginning of Ox-Bow Incident when one of the strangers points out that they have to be careful as they are strangers.

Xenophobia plays a big part of the film, which often stemmed from hearsay and stories told by friends in small towns throughout the west. Some of these stories can be read in old newspapers that exaggerated tales in order to increase sales. This has also been exploited in many Westerns. Then you have those who lived by the status of protecting themselves against others, and in that perspective strangers were commonly seen as threats. Despite the prevalence of xenophobia many of the towns such as the one in Ox-bow Incident, they would have insisted that their town were the nicest and most pleasant of them all. If this was the case, then why would there be stories of lynching and vigilantism in the decades after the Western expansion, stories such as the Ox-Bow Incident.

The film opens with two strangers riding into the quiet small town of the story's focus, as they tie their horses outside the town's saloon. One of the strangers gives a friendly gesture to one of the townsfolk, probably to ease possible tension within the town. These two men, Gil Carter (Henry Fonda) and his friend, are visiting Gil's girlfriend, Rose Mapen, but it happens that she has left most likely due to the married women who saw her as a threat. Upset Gil ends up in a fight with a cowboy, Jeff Farnley (Marc Lawrence), who suggests that he has stolen some cattle since he is a stranger after all. Instead of getting in trouble, Gil teaches the man a lesson by beating him up and making him look foolish. Shortly after, a young boy rushes into the saloon and yells that Kinkaid has been killed and his cattle are missing.

The emotions are flowing and a vice-Sheriff improperly deputies the townsfolk who set out to find the killer. Gil and his friend have no choice than to go with, or they might be perceived as the guilty party, which might be enough for a rowdy mob. It turns into a journey of legal madness where lawlessness prevails in the hands of those in emotional turmoil while xenophobia reaches its pinnacle. But instead of displaying an ordinary tale of vengeance, the Ox-Bow Incident depicts a moral story of justice and humanity in darkness. The culminating ending delivers a potent lesson when the posse returns to the saloon where it all once began. The director William A. Wellman truly created a brilliant cinematic experience through this Western tale, which opposes the greatness of the Western and instead displays the wickedness of lawlessness.


Daring attempt   March 3, 2006
S. Chatterjee (Morgantown, WV United States)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

This movie is truely exceptional. It is an exception to those westerns made during that decade. This movie didn't showcase some wonderful unrelated landscapes from Monument valley, any songs, any love triangle, any revenge or any unwanted gunfight etc. What it potrayed was a short simple story with a shocking twist at the end. Being a western movie and specially Henry Fonda fan everybody should watch this movie. And believe me this movie specially the story (written by Walter Van Tilburg Clark - as a Novel) and the stunning performances by Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews and last but not the least Anthony Quinn will be a breeze of fresh air to the mainstream western prototypes (with all due respects to Wayne's Classic Westerns).


Morality play meets Wild West   July 15, 2008
fra7299 (California, United States)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

Have you ever thought you knew what the right thing to do was, but couldn't convince others of your reasoning?

"The Ox-Bow Incident" could be best described as a western disguised as a morality play on mob justice, or vice versa. It definitely is a film which is based on not the traditional western format of "shoot em up" but rather takes a philosophical approach to what mob justice really entails, and what its consequences are.

Two men, Carter (Henry Fonda) and Croft (Harry Morgan), come into town and get themselves entangled with a group going out to find the murderer of a man in the local town. While the two feel reluctant to go out and be a part of this, they are urged on by another man, Davies, to go and make sure that the criminal or criminals will get a fair trial. Because the sheriff is not around, one deputy decides to "deputize" all the posse going out to find the killer, giving them the power to act as a majority. As the posse crosses a patch of area, they spot three men who they believe to be the killers. Rather than being judicial, one of the men, Tetley, becomes the ringleader of mob justice, wanting to hang the men on the spot. From here, the story becomes a dilemma in morals, where those who feel the men deserve a fair trial counter against those who feel that justice is "slow and careless." Carter emerges as one of the voices for the three men, who he feels deserve some form of fair justice.

As one reviewer alluded to, this is not a film that wastes words or time. Each scene of the film is concise and important to the eventual outcome of the story. Henry Fonda is a great leading character in the film, despite not getting as much of a role as one would assume. However, after the highest point of the film, and especially during the film's final fifteen minutes, Fonda's role really shines.

This is a unique look at the idea of mob justice played out on a Western scene. As far as the extras, what I really liked was the biography of Henry Fonda as Hollywood's Quiet Hero, detailing his many roles on screen and off screen. It really shows the talent of this actor, and the integrity he brought to his many roles in such films as The Grapes of Wrath (where he plays Tom Joad) and Twelve Angry Men (where he plays the man who has to convince eleven other jurors of a man's innocence).

Over all, this is a wonderful, profound film, with "no fat" extras.



a very good western that flopped at the box office in 1943   March 15, 1999
George Fabian (Mountainside, USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

A powerful, hard-hitting anti-lynching parable that audiences found easy to resist in 1943. A boxoffice failure, it has withstood the test of time.