The Deadline (1931)

This moody little western is the first Buck Jones western I've ever seen and portrays him in an interestingly ambivalent light as a man with a quick temper who has been jailed for five years for allegedly accidentally killing a man by a blow to the head. The film opens with him being released on parole after serving a year, and establishes from the outset an element of suspense in that he will have to walk away from any potential confrontation he encounters; a situation he is not temperamentally cut out for. Writer-director Lambert Hillyer does his usual workmanlike job, assisted in this instance by atmospheric photography by Byron Haskin, notably in a bank robbery staged at night after hours.