Ride the High Country

Steve Judd, an aging former lawman, is hired to carry gold down from a mining camp to a bank. He brings in an old friend, Gil Westrum, and Westrum's young companion, Heck Longtree, to ride with him. What Judd does not know is that the two men have agreed to the job only so they can take the gold for themselves. Along the way, the group meets Elsa Knudsen, who joins them in hopes of reaching the camp to marry her fiancé, Billy Hammond, despite her father's opposition. Once there, she finds that Billy and his brothers are violent and unscrupulous, and she turns to Judd and his companions for protection.

The film was directed by Sam Peckinpah, the first of the twelve features listed in his filmography, and written by N.B. Stone Jr. It was produced by Richard E. Lyons for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and runs 94 minutes. Randolph Scott plays Westrum and Joel McCrea plays Judd, with Mariette Hartley as Elsa, Ron Starr as Heck, and supporting turns from Edgar Buchanan and R. G. Armstrong among a credited cast of 35.

On IMDb the film holds a rating of 7.4 from around 16,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 7.1 from roughly 250 votes. A critics' rating of 8.2 from 19 reviews places it somewhat above those audience scores.