“I came a thousand miles to kill you, and I'm not going to rush it,” growls Jimmy Stewart in this King Lear–inspired Western of blood and vengeance, the last of his collaborations with Anthony Mann and the synthesis of the charm and psychosis in Stewart's Everyman figure. Stewart's aw-shucks act (“he was friendly to everyone he met,” harmonizes the theme song) is jarringly split against his emotional and physical tortures, as he seeks vengeance against a clan ruled by a near-blind patriarch and his lily-livered sadist of a son. If “hate's unbecoming” in a man like him, The Man From Laramie boasts enough masochistic torments to justify such passions, including moments of cruelty unmatched in the American Western. When Stewart is vengefully shot point-blank in the hand, his venomous response, more animalistic death rattle than human speech, signals that Mr. Smith is indeed a long, long way from Washington.