Review of The Capture

The Capture (1950)
6/10
For a man of your intelligence that's a bad decision
20 November 2007
Warning: Spoilers
**SPOILERS** On the run from the Mexican police hungry exhausted and wounded, after getting his right arm entangled in barbwire during his escape, Lin Vanner, Lew Ayres, finds his way to Father Gomez's, Victor Jory, house in the Mexican desert. After having his arm bandaged Lin tells the man of God his tale of woe a tale that goes back over a year ago when Vanner was involved with a posse tracking down Sam Tevlin, Edwin Rand, a wanted payroll robber and murderer.

Forced by his fiancée Luana, Jackie White, to join the chase after the fleeing Tevlin Lin having him cornered ends up shooting the wounded man who, like Lin has now, had a wounded right arm. It was the fact that Tevlin couldn't raise his right arm up in the air that Lin , thinking that he was about to take a shot at him, ended up blasting him. It was later when Tevlin died from his wounds that Lin started to get guilty feeling about what he did and after he refused to pick up the $2,000.00 reward that was awarded to him in getting Tevlin that Luana, disgusted with her future husbands feeling sorry for himself, walked out of on him.

The movie "The Capture" then takes a different turn with Lin traveling to Tevlin's, who an American, home in Los Santos Mexico meeting his widow Ellen, Teresa Wright, and ten year old son Mike, Jimmy Hunt. Keeping his true identity from Ellen Lin tells her that he's looking for a job at her ranch as a ranch-hand using the phony name of Lindley Brown. It doesn't take that long for Ellen to find out, checking out Brown's room, that Mr. Brown is actually Lin Vanner her husbands killer. Instead of the outraged Ellen letting Lin have it, about killing her husband Sam, she instead works the guy almost into the ground with him having no idea why she's doing that.

Finally realizing why Ellen is so down on him by finding that she broke into his room, and found a newspaper clipping about Lin gunning down her husband, that Lin finally let the cat out of the bag. It turns out that Sam was not only a wife beater and drunk, how did Lin know all this?, but that he spent most of his time away from Ellen and Mike hanging out and drinking the night away with the senoritas at the local bars in town.

Incredibly Ellen, within minuets after he told her the truth about himself, falls heads over heels in love with Lin and in what seems like the next day get married to him! You would have thought that the movie "The Capture" would end there and then instead it continued with Lin going back to the states to find the real reason for Sam Tevlin being framed in the payroll robbery and murder of those armed guards who were delivering the cash! Lin feels that he was, without his knowledge, set up as the hit-man to do in Tevlin by the person who was****SPOILER ALERT**** the real robber and killer the VP of the company that was held up Big Earl Mahoney, Barry Kelly.

You soon got lost in the film when Lin suddenly decides to become a private eye and then does his gumshoe act that was totally unconvincing as well as making the movie look ridiculous. Lin has the surviving guard of the robbery Juan Valdez, Felipe Turich, end up committing suicide by hanging himself on the church bell-tower. This happened after Lin badgered Valdez almost to death, threatening to have the disabled mans pension taken away from him, in trying to get him to open up about who really shot him and his fellow security guards! Lin who should have felt just as guilty, if not more, for his driving the innocent Veldez to kill himself like he felt guilty in shooting Sam Tevlin didn't as much as shed a tear for the poor man!

Acting totally out of character Lin then crashes Big Earl's place and after showing Big Earl that he's got the goods on him, in him not Sam being the one who robbed the payroll truck, gets into a fight with Big Earl, who's twice as big as Lin, killing him by smashing a whiskey bottle over his head! It's then that the film gets back to the present with Lin holed up in Fathet Gomez's home with the Mexican police, together with Ellen trying to talk Lin into giving himself up, giving Lin just minutes to either surrender or they'll blast away.

The only thing about the ending of "The Capture" is that besides being totally predictable, just by reading the movies title, is that a miracle happened for the wounded and suicidal Linn who was responsible for the death of three persons in the movie! A miracle that for some strange reason didn't happen for Sam Tevlin who didn't kill anyone! Go figure that out!
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