Thursday, September 26, 2013

Gun the Man Down (1956)

United Artists
Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(MGMHD)

A standard western plot, thieves abandon one of their gang after a robbery who later seeks them out for revenge, is presented as an intelligent, adult drama. James Arness, in his last movie role before becoming world famous on Gunsmoke, does a year in jail for the crime, but wastes no time in finding his former partners in a dusty western town once released. They have set up shop in a saloon, and the ringleader has taken up with his former fiance. He hires a gunslinger to kill Arness, but loses in a duel. Arness then pursues them into a box canyon for the final showdown. Baby-faced Angie Dickinson, in her first leading movie role, is quite good as the former saloon hall girl who wants to go respectable but can't quite shake her past. The film suffers somewhat due to its back lot production, and the plot occasionally slows to a crawl, but a fine example from the period when westerns began to overcome their kiddie matinee origins.

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