Jacques Rivette hailed Anthony Mann as “one of the four great directors of postwar Hollywood” alongside Nicholas Ray, Richard Brooks and Robert Aldrich. Studied by French film critics, several of whom would be part of the French New Wave, Mann started as Preston Sturges’ assistant director as well as the director of screen tests for movies like Gone With the Wind.

He’s probably best-known for his Westerns, many of which starred Jimmy Stewart like The Naked Spur and Winchester ’73. He was fired from Spartacus by its star, Kirk Douglas, and left his next film, Cimarron, after disagreements about shooting on a sound stage. After all, Mann’s locations are just about characters in themselves. He was right. The good news was that when he made El Cid it was a huge success.

The heroes of the Westerns that Mann made aren’t always heroes at first. In his article “The Last Mann,” Richard Corliss said, “The Mann western hero has learned wariness the hard way, because he usually has something to hide. He is a man with a past: some psychic shadow or criminal activity that has left him gnarled and calcified. Not so long ago he was a raider, a rustler, maybe a killer. If a movie were made of some previous chapter in his life, he’d be the villain, and he might be gunned down before he had the chance at redemption that Mann’s films offer.”

Bounty hunter Morgan Hickman (Henry Fonds) rides into town with a dead body, looking to make his money. He’s treated like evil itself, except by Sheriff Ben Owens (Anthony Perkins), a way too young and innocent man who has become the law because no one else wanted the job.

Ben is in love with Millie Parker (Mary Webster), whose father was the last law in town and she won’t take him as a husband until he quits. Hickman tells him she’s smart because he used to have a star and it ruined his life. That said, he does offer to teach Ben a little about how to stand up for himself.

On the day the town plans on celebrating his 75th birthday, Dr. McCord (John McIntire) is killed by the McGaffey brothers, Ed (Lee Van Cleef) and Zeke (Peter Baldwin). The entire town wants them dead but Ben believes in innocent until proven guilty. He’s willing to stand up for himself and even defeats town bully Bart Bogardus (Neville Brand) by slapping him and then outdrawing him.

As for Morgan, he falls for Nona Mayfield (Betsy Palmer) and becomes a surrogate father to her son Kip (Michel Ray). It’s a nice way to show that he can still be a tender person after years of hiding his humanity. It’s also an interesting inverse comparison to the renter falling for his landlady and helping her son relationship that also shows up in The Shootist.

The Arrow release of Tin Star has extras like brand new audio commentary by film historian Toby Roan, an appreciation of the film by author and critic Neil Sinyard, an interview with Peter Bernstein on her father’s work, a trailer and an image gallery. It all comes inside a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sam Hadley and also has a double-sided fold-out poster, six postcard-sized reproduction artcards and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Barry Forshaw and original press notes.

You can get the blu ray from MVD.