Midnight Run (1988)

Robert De Niro is the taciturn bounty hunter called in on one last job by Joe Pantoliano, to bring in an accountant for the mob (Charles Grodin) who’s stolen millions of his employer’s money and given it to charity in a fit of pique on finding out they guy’s true identity. His faked fear of flying means a cross-country journey from NYC to LA – with the FBI, the mob and rival bounty hunter John Ashton on their tails. This handcuffed odd couple are like chalk and cheese, the phobic money man and the smartass no-nonsense ex-cop in this near-definitive buddy movie: their byplay is priceless, with both De Niro and Grodin turning in brilliant performances. This action comedy written by George Gallo is one of the great screenplays of the Eighties. Directed with verve by Martin Brest in what is his best film to date. Simply sublime.

Ride Lonesome (1959)

One of the acclaimed Randolph Scott-Budd Boetticher collaborations utilising the amazing writing talent of Burt Kennedy, later to direct some pretty terrific westerns himself. This has Scott as Ben Brigade, a bounty hunter transporting a killer (James Best) but waiting for his brother (Lee van Cleef) to show up to account for an even worse crime. He is stuck at a staging post helping a woman (Karen Steele) whose husband has been killed by Indians and two outlaws help him out. They are played by James Coburn in his debut and Pernell Roberts, who is a very sexy, swaggering, saturnine man – much to my surprise, only knowing him in later years as Trapper John MD but who achieved fame shortly after this by starring in Bonanza on TV. Steele is incredible looking and her assets are a match for the beautiful stark landscape, used as ever by Boetticher to comment on the action, with the burning hanging tree at the conclusion a symbolic form of closure. James Best, the cowardly killer, is immediately recognisable from The Dukes of Hazzard as Sheriff Rosco Coltrane. How cool is that?