Noted film critic and screenwriter Paul Schrader mentions director Budd Boetticher in the same breath as Yasujiro Ozu and Robert Bresson in his landmark study, Transcendental Style in Film, and it's easy to see why in Ride Lonesome. Ostensibly produced as a B Western, the film's psychologically freighted CinemaScope compositions and de-dramatized plot make it as grimly existential as any noir. Randolph Scott stars as a bounty hunter transporting a boyish outlaw, a cliché set-up that here blooms under Boetticher's comic pessimism and blasted landscapes. Long unavailable on DVD, Ride Lonesome's epic vistas demand the full theatrical experience as much as any Sergio Leone film.