A former Union Army officer plans to sell out to Anchor Ranch and move east with his fiancée, but the low price offered by Anchor's crippled owner and the outfit's bullying tactics make him reconsider. When one of his hands is murdered he decides to stay and fight, utilizing his war experience. Not all is well at Anchor with the owner's wife carrying on with his brother who also has a Mexican woman in town.
The Violent Men is a 1955 American CinemaScope Western film directed by Rudolph Maté and starring Glenn Ford, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Dianne Foster, Brian Keith, and May Wynn. Based on the 1955 novel Smoky Valley by Donald Hamilton, its storyline involves a ranch owner who comes into conflict with the land grabbing tactics of the big local rancher, whose tense marriage threatens his family's stranglehold over the region.