The Ox-Bow Incident

The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036244/]

The Gist:
This is possibly the most ambitious B-movie I've ever seen. And it is a B-movie, directed by Wellman (who directed other such film karma B-movies as Public Enemy and Night Nurse), running an hour and fifteen minutes, and with ticky tacky western sets. It does, however, have a star in Henry Fonda and a script that challenges the very nature of justice and the mob mentality, creating perhaps a darker version of the modern lynch mob mentality explored in Fonda's 12 Angry Men. Where the latter film had Fonda as mythic lone figure who is able to stem the tide of blind injustice, here Fonda is a far more flawed and human character. He is able to see that what is happening is wrong but what little he tries to do to stop the momentum of the posse is inept and ineffectual. The innocent men are hanged, and the mob must then face the consequences of their actions when the men are revealed to be innocent far too late for it to matter. The film is surprisingly moving, it really caught me off guard.