Problem is, no one should be scared of Redford.

Yeah, I had the same thought as scary is not something I'd use to describe Redford both presence-wise and personality-wise.

Although Redford was indeed miscast and delivers much of his dialogue unconvincingly, I'm not sure his character was supposed to be all the scary--- at least, not originally.

One of the points of his character had been that he had been railroaded into prison, somewhat framed, for some political reason, and he wasn't a hardened criminal by nature.

But much of that was left on the cutting-room floor due to infamous conflicts behind the camera between the director, screenwriter, the producer, and the studio.

But with those cuts, we're left with the threadbare scenario that the town has gone all nuts because the oil magnate's son is now dating Redford's wife, and Redford is now on the loose.... which doesn't really make any sense; at least, not on its own.

So we now have to assume Redford's reputation has been built into a monstrous one by local gossip.

But we never find out what was behind his imprisonment other than Duvall stealing 50 dollars when they were "kids", or what Redford's mother did to him that was so awful, etc...

Resultantly, the film and its characters' motives becomes this odd pastiche of things which don't really hold together in terms of logic.




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