AllMovie

Filmed simultaneously with The Shooting in the fall of 1966, Ride in the Whirlwind is one of Monte Hellman's most elegiac, haunting, and ultimately most satisfying and extraordinary films. It's also one of the finest darn Westerns ever made. Much of the film's success should also go to actor/screenwriter Jack Nicholson's script, which is rich with almost fetishistic detail for frontier life. Nicholson reportedly spent considerable time doing research by reading journals of Old West pioneers. Unlike Hellman's equally brilliant The Shooting, Whirlwind forsakes the former film's existential and surreal approach to the Western with a low-key, deceitfully straightforward narrative. The film's power resides in the minute details of frontier life. Whether it's watching the three hapless cowboys uncomfortably drink whiskey with the gang of bandits inside the claustrophobic cabin, or the frontier homesteaders going through their mundane rituals of survival, the film offers a credible take on what life may have been like in the late-1800s. The performances are all excellent, especially Cameron Mitchell as the inarticulate cowboy desperately trying to make sense of an increasingly grim situation. Nicholson's great as well, even though he's saddled with a far less showy role than he had in The Shooting. The film also paints a harsh look at the prevalence of vigilantism in the West, and how fear and the ruthlessness of the so-called law both tamed and tyrannized a land forged by violence.