Ride the Pink Horse

When Lucky Gagin, a luckless veteran played by Robert Montgomery, steps from the interstate bus, he is greeted by a flashing neon sign: “Buenos Dias. Howdy.” The border town, known generically as San Pablo, is an indistinct zone of amalgamated cultures—Mexican Americans, gringos, and local Pueblo Indians—though it bears distinct resemblance to the Santa Fe of Dorothy B. Hughes’s 1946 novel. Director Montgomery creates a claustrophobic space where danger resides in the familiar, the exotic “other” becomes an unexpected ally, and, like the karmic carousel at its center, what goes around comes around.