Warlock offers us a mean-spirited, mercenary Henry Fonda and an honest, peaceloving Richard Widmark. A Wyatt Earp-like frontier marshal, Fonda agrees to protect the small town of Warlock from an outlaw gang, but only if he's permitted to plunder the town's cash reserve. Widmark, the town deputy, is a reformed outlaw whose willingness to fend off the invading criminals is motivated by his fondness for his new neighbors. Looming large in the proceedings is Anthony Quinn as the glory-grabbing Fonda's sidekick. Adapted by Robert Alan Aurthur from a novel by Oakley Hall, Warlock is a good example of the "thinking man's westerns" prevalent in the late 1950s-early 1960s.
