It’s a film with an universal and timeless story, good versus evil. It’s an straightforward film with a clearly defined hero and villain. To say that they don’t make films quite like High Noon, is an understatement.

| Jul 31, 2024

High Noon is not only one of the best Western films of all time but changed the way people viewed the Western genre.

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 7, 2024

Without question, this is one of the three best westerns since Stagecoach (the other two being The Westerner and My Darling Clementine). But my admiration for it is not without qualification.

| Oct 4, 2022

Fred Zinnemann’s film generates suspense — and stark social commentary...

| Oct 4, 2022

Not since My Darling Clementine have we seen a more exciting gun battle on the screen than that in High Noon.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 20, 2022

Add a string of plausible characterizations and an excellent performance by Gary Cooper as a former town marshal, and High Noon moves up into the class of absorbing drama.

| Sep 20, 2022

Director Fred Zinnemann's expert hand has made High Noon one of the best film western of all time.

| Sep 20, 2022

This gives us some time-tested staples: Gary Cooper, a pioneer Western town, lawlessness, gun-shootin' and a haunting theme song you've probably heard already. To these add a movie rarity -- a mature point of view.

| Sep 20, 2022

High Noon is just what a Western should be -- a page out of American folklore, a close-to-the-soil delineation of human characters, played against a true-to-life background.

| Sep 20, 2022

Its insights are primer sociology, and the demonstration of the town's cowardice is Q.E.D. It's a tight piece of work, though -- well directed by Fred Zinnemann.

| Sep 20, 2022

High Noon tries for art, but it succeeds only in being overly arty.

| Sep 20, 2022

It's Cooper's show all the way and to him goes the credit for that different and wonderful Western you've hoped for.

| Sep 20, 2022

Here's a western story with the hero being human, and not a far-fetched hero, afraid of nothing. You worry about Cooper in this film. You don't worry about the average western hero. The human quality in this makes it different.

| Sep 20, 2022

This is a film of integrity and purpose, a revelation of human character and a masterpiece of the story telling art.

| Sep 20, 2022

Cooper performs magnificently and the rest of the cast also are very good in what are essentially routine roles.

| Sep 20, 2022

High Noon achieves a shattering tension. It is a remorselessly deliberate pace at which Zinnemann follows his story's hero along the desperately lonely trail of courage against ever-mounting odds.

| Sep 20, 2022

What it comes down to is that the makers of High Noon, in an attempt to inject new content into the standard Western formula, have raised vexing moral issues that they have no intention of treating in a responsible way.

| Sep 20, 2022

Mr. Kramer has produced an exciting western, but he has ended it on a sour and dubious note.

| Sep 20, 2022

This Stanley Kramer production is a taut and absorbing western melodrama, distinguished by fine directions and performances, particularly that of Gary Cooper in the leading role.

| Sep 20, 2022

A tense and exciting evening's entertainment for adults. As a parable of humanity's moral cowardice, however, the film rings false.

| Sep 20, 2022