In Hadleyville, New Mexico, outgoing Marshall Will Kane (Gary Cooper in an Academy Award-winning performance) is preparing to move away with his new bride, Quaker pacifist Amy (Grace Kelly), when he learns that a criminal he imprisoned is arriving on the noon train, determined to get revenge. Bound by conflicting duties, Kane’s fate inches ever closer as the train’s arrival time nears. Carl Forman’s screenplay, a thinly veiled metaphor to the Hollywood blacklisting of the 1940s and 50s, used Western genre conventions to give audiences a new kind of hero.