Angel and the Badman (1947)

(On Cable TV, February 2022) I am not a John Wayne fan, so I’m seeing his films more out of cinematic history duty than anything else. Angel and the Badman is best known for three very different things these days. First: it marked Wayne’s first film as a producer, meaning that we can get a better idea here of what he really wanted to do, or what he really wanted to play. Second: The film is in the public domain, which means that you can watch it from its Wikipedia page and so it remains more popular than similar westerns due to its wide availability. The third aspect is the most interesting. Rather than make a bog-standard western with the expected gunfights and horse chases, Wayne here plays in a far less action-driven, more romantic kind of western. The story of a wounded gunfighter slowly being nursed back to health by two dedicated women, Angel and the Badman doesn’t feel like a standard western and that very much works to its advantage. While Wayne doesn’t make much of a romantic protagonist (admittedly a major point against the film), it does offer a change of pace from his usual characters… or, rather, as much of a change as possible with Wayne’s limited range. Given the limitations of the lead actor, that makes Angel and the Badman more of an interesting film than a good one. But I’ll take it—My opinion of Wayne’s persona being as low as it is, anything even slightly different is usually a step up.