Review: West of the Divide (1934)

So I watched “West of the Divide” again last Tuesday night, couldn’t sleep. It’s one of those foggy cowboy flicks you remember from när man var liten och satt framför TV:n med varm O’boy och knäckebröd med ost. I must’ve seen it for the first time at my morfar’s old house in Lidingö — he had a stack of these VHS tapes nobody’d touched in years. That John Wayne glare, man, it carved itself right into my brain like the time I fell off my bike outside Konsum.

Anyway. This one’s directed by Robert N. Bradbury. He did a bunch of these B-Westerns back in the 30s. Quick, dirty, straight to the point. The runtime? Just under an hour. Vilken dröm för såna som mej with the attention span of a goldfish sometimes.

John Wayne, crazy young here – no eye patch, no gravel voice, just raw grin-and-shoot. The plot? He’s pretending to be some outlaw called Gat Ganns to find his dad’s killer and reunite with his kidnapped brother. Simple stuff, really. But there’s something kinda beautiful about that simplicity too. It almost feels like watching someone read a bedtime story to a grumpy cow.

You get the crusty villain in a big hat, the righteous fists-of-justice vibe, and a horse that definitely deserved more camera time. Soundtrack’s mostly crickets and spurs, which weirdly works. Budget must’ve been… what, 30 bucks and a meatball sandwich?

But real talk – the emotional punch lands harder than you’d expect from a cowboy who barely blinks. There’s a scene near the end with the brothers that actually got spooky similar to stuff me and my brorsa went through after our old man passed. So yeah… didn’t expect a gutpunch from a 1934 oater.

Anyway, it’s not perfect. But damn if it isn’t solid. Like gammalt knäckebröd. You know it’ll hurt your gums, but it’s still good.

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