Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
Hud Bannon is a ruthless young man who tarnishes everything and everyone he touches. Hud represents the perfect embodiment of alienated youth, out for kicks with no regard for the consequences. There is bitter conflict between the callous Hud and his stern and highly principled father, Homer. Hud's nephew Lon admires Hud's cheating ways, though he soon becomes too aware of Hud's reckless amorality to bear him anymore. In the world of the takers and the taken, Hud is a winner. He's a cheat, but, he explains, "I always say the law was meant to be interpreted in a lenient manner."
Hud is elevated primarily by its exceptional performances — Paul Newman's charismatic yet chilling portrayal of moral vacancy, anchored by Melvyn Douglas's Oscar-winning turn as the principled Homer. James Wong Howe's black-and-white cinematography is genuinely outstanding, capturing the arid Texas landscape with stark, sun-bleached beauty that mirrors the film's moral bleakness. The plot, adapted from Larry McMurtry's novel, is deliberately understated — a character study more than a narrative-driven story, which works well but won't satisfy everyone. Its neo-western sensibility was fairly fresh for 1963, deconstructing the Western hero archetype, though the anti-hero template wasn't entirely unprecedented. The ending — Hud alone, having driven everyone away, walking back into his hollow domain — is effectively bleak but perhaps too muted to fully resonate as a dramatic payoff.