The Law and Jake Wade

Jake Wade, a former outlaw who has put his criminal past behind him, breaks Clint Hollister out of jail to settle an old debt. The two men clearly remain bitter enemies, and after they part ways, Jake returns to his job as a small-town marshal and to his fiancée. Hollister tracks him down, and it emerges that the two once rode together in a gang; Jake alone knows where the money from a bank robbery was buried. Hollister and his men seize the marshal and his bride-to-be and head for the hills, forcing Jake to lead them to the hidden loot.

John Sturges directed this Western, the fifth of the eighteen films he made, arriving between The Old Man and the Sea and Last Train from Gun Hill. William Bowers wrote the screenplay, and William B. Hawks produced it for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Robert Taylor plays Jake Wade opposite Richard Widmark as Clint Hollister, with Patricia Owens as Peggy, Robert Middleton as Ortero, Henry Silva as Rennie and DeForest Kelley as Wexler. Running just under an hour and a half, the film holds a rating of 6.8 on IMDb from roughly 3,100 votes and 6.7 on TMDB from a much smaller sample of around 64 votes, suggesting a modest but settled reputation among viewers.