Ride the High Country (1962) is apparently the movie that launched director Sam Peckinpah's career. James Drury fans take note! Drury is not the star--Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea are--and he doesn't appear in the movie until quite a ways after the beginning, but his role is pivotal.Drury's character is completely different from his role as Lom Trevors in ASJ and it was really interesting to see him as a real jerk, a miner with three louts as brothers, one of whom is LQ Jones (Stagecoach Seven), who marries a girl that doesn't know what she's getting herself into, and he comes to a bad end. But I had to rewatch Drury's scenes when his character first appeared as I wasn't sure it was him; he looked very different from Lom.
The story actually begins with Scott and McCrea agreeing to guard a shipment of gold from a mining camp, but lots of moral ambiguities arise as a result of their decision. The scenes at the mining camp are a far cry from how miners were depicted in ASJ.
There is an excellent bonus feature that details Sam Peckinpah's career and it states that this movie is considered a classic Western. It has some violence but not nearly as much as later Peckinpah films reportedly do (I haven't seen anything else by him). I liked the movie and certainly recommend it.
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