Vera Cruz

Vera Cruz (1954) — watch online one of the sharpest westerns of the decade, directed by Robert Aldrich and produced by Hecht-Lancaster Productions. Gary Cooper plays Benjamin Trane, a broke former Confederate officer drifting south. Burt Lancaster plays Joe Erin, a grinning killer who'd sell his grandmother for the right price. Together they end up hired as escort for a French noblewoman crossing occupied Mexico.

The convoy turns out to be the easy part. Hidden in the carriage: three million dollars in gold bound for Emperor Maximilian's treasury. From that moment, every ally is a potential backstabber, every canyon could be an ambush, and Trane has to decide how much of his conscience he can afford to sell.

The Cooper–Lancaster pairing is the whole show — quiet decency against smiling menace, a dynamic that anticipates Leone's moral calculus by a decade. The film pulled over eleven million dollars at the 1954 box office, a landmark gross for a Hollywood western at the time. Stream Vera Cruz (1954) online on iFILM.