Gunfighters (1947)

Directed by George Wagner; produced by Harry Joe Brown

Brazos Kane (Randolph Scott) has become known for his quick draw. His fame - or infamy - is so great that even his best friend needs to know whether he can be beaten. Having had enough of shootings, Kane throws away his revolvers and tries to live a peaceable life. That’s tough to do when the next town he enters is riddled with murders, conflict and treachery.

Though Scott had of course been in westerns prior to Gunfighters, it was about this time that he made a conscious decision to make movies only in that genre. This would culminate in a number of excellent films starring Scott and directed by Budd Boetticher, though others were also of quality, including Scott’s final film, Ride the High Country. Gunfighters is, however, a rather mediocre introduction to this energetic period of Scott’s career.

It is not that Gunfighters is a bad movie; it simply doesn’t stand out, even with the dependable Scott in the lead, creating his usual sympathetic and likeable character. The story begins as if it is to focus on Kane’s moral dilemma - to fight or not to fight - but the rest of it only touches on that incidentally. The plot is a fairly standard one of a greedy land-owner seeking to increase his holdings. But even in this aspect, Gunfighters isn’t very clear: there is no set of opponents for the villain to intimidate, and those he does oppose don’t seem intent on changing the landscape and thus depriving anyone of their riches.

There is some good work by the actors. Barbara Britton and Dorothy Hart play a pair of sisters who manage to maintain a loving relationship while being quite different, and pursuing mutually hostile goals. Charles Kemper admirably plays a sheriff trying to outride his principles. But the other actors are hampered by indefinite characters. Forrest Tucker appears as Ben Orcutt, a gunslinger/assassin, but his character doesn’t seem to have been brought in for any purpose, since the big landowner’s locals enemies are easily handled by his men, and Orcutt arrives too soon after Kane to have been summoned to deal with him.

The action is adequate but not outstanding. There is a good horse-chase sequence near the beginning and an attempt to trample someone with a horse - these suggesting that the wranglers on the set were good and well-used - but the climax is nothing special. There are the usual bullet-wounds that are cured with a bandage or a sling, but that is standard for movies of the period.

Gunfighters is a blandly-named, ordinary western, and not indicative of the better films that would soon round out Randolph Scott’s catalogue.