There Was a Crooked Man (1970)

Institutional corruption and the morally eroding effect of get-rich-quick visions are topics as fresh today as they were in the frontier times depicted in There Was a Crooked Man (1970). Set largely in an Arizona prison long before the advent of air-conditioning, this western morality tale pits a wily convict against a system of governance and individuals that are as powerless against the allure of the criminal's ill-gotten gains as a fresh coat of whitewash is against the desert's corrosive sands and blistering sun. With a hidden fortune at stake, what is the point of denying one man his natural-born, cash-bought freedom?