"Ride Lonesome, like the finest of (the) Boetticher series, is written by Burt Kennedy and feels like an unrushed short story. As Ride Lonesome opens, bounty hunter Randolph Scott easily captures a whiny young outlaw whose shifting value - as bait for more outlaws, as reward dollars, as amnesty for those who bring him in-differs for each of Scott's uninvited traveling companions. James Coburn, in his first film, is engagingly gawky, while Lee Van Cleef is already snakelike. Even by Boetticher's taut standards, Ride Lonesome is cut down to essentials-seven characters lost among primordial boulders, a characteristic Boetticher landscape. In a genre where the gunfight ending is nearly invariable, this film builds to surprises." (Scott Simmon) "Bleaker but not too distant in mood from the autumnal resignation of Peckinpah's Ride the High Country, as Scott's aging lawman lets time catch up with him....It's deviously structured as an odyssey of cross-purposes...a small masterpiece." (Tom Milne)