Book123

    Free register and download UseNet downloader, then you can FREE Download from UseNet.

    Download without Limit " Audiobooks & Video Training Hour Of The Gun (1967) " from UseNet for FREE!

More

Hour Of The Gun (1967) Directed by John Sturges

Genre: Western

Hour of the Gun surprised people by starting the story where it usually ends, with the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. In the pre- The Wild Bunch, pre- revisionist year of 1967, everything about John Sturges' movie came as a sobering surprise.

In 1956 John Sturges made the glossiest and (then) most profitable of the golden-age Tombstone sagas, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Like most of the versions, it paints Earp and his martyred brothers as lily-pure lawmen striving to bring peace and justice to the territory. The Ike Clanton gang are just lawless scum in dire need of extermination.

In Hour of the Gun, Sturges follows the reflective direction of John Ford, who in the previous decade had been leaning his westerns toward the subjects of racism, mob mentality and the fate of the Indians. In the crazy political climate ("polarized" is the safer word) of 1967, Hour of the Gun played like a criticism of core American values. After "printing the legend" for a century, it was time for the country to grow up and realize that America not only didn't have the copyright on righteousness, its history wasn't the shining chronicle of virtue taught in school.

Author Edward Anhalt's long list of admirable film credits include several films for Sturges. He pares the drama down to the political facts of the Clanton-Earp feud - nobody admires the pretty scenery or hopes for a glorious garden to be raised from the desert. Most of the talk is about conflicting legal jurisdictions and warring political factions butting heads. It's really a gang war with both lawfully deputized sides posturing to maintain a good front and refusing to flinch under provocation. As a perceptive critic observed, the incident at the O.K. Corral is more like an L.A. drive-by than a Gunsmoke-style shootout. This is a gangster film in western dress.

The story arc plots the deterioration of Wyatt Earp's moral stance. He begins with a clean conscience, but as the body count goes up the fighting becomes too personal to stick to the rule books. The main killings are directed against political candidates, assassinations with the aim of controlling the balance of power in the territory: Tombstone is no more civilized than a Banana Republic. Wyatt maintains an ethical posture for his business backers, who have as much to gain from Clanton being booted from Tombstone as Clanton has incentive to take over. But when the going gets tough and good people start dying, Earp basically takes the gloves off and starts killing those he sets out to arrest - goading some into one-sided duels and simply executing others. When one is the only law in the territory and lives are on the line, cutting corners comes naturally. All of Wyatt's evasions and rationalizations are just that. Hour of the Gun is pure series of violent incidents that don't tell a noble story of good triumphing over evil. That's how things really happen in history.

The Earp/Holliday relationship is less sentimental than in other versions. Holliday is Earp's conscience: When a known killer is critical, Earp has to know he's doing wrong. Jason Robards' best work was on stage, with only a few film roles worthy of him. A couple of his dramatic exchanges in Hour of the Gun are more powerful than any gunplay. Robert Ryan is a great Ike Clanton, the kind of pragmatic scoundrel who realizes the country is changing and isn't above lawbreaking to secure himself a place in its future. Clanton might run for public office but would probably prefer to control things from behind the scenes.

The supporting cast overflows with interesting faces: Albert Salmi (Wild River), Charles Aidman, Steve Ihnat (The Chase), William Windom, Larry Gates, Jon Voight (Midnight Cowboy), Karl Swenson (Major Dundee) and Jorge Russek (The Wild Bunch). Robert Ryan and Jason Robards figured strongly in Sam Peckinpah's filmography. One amusing bit has author Edward Anhalt playing the male nurse who sneaks booze in for Doc Holliday during his Colorado "rest cure."

The handsomely shot film has a brief detour in a gentrified Denver and ends with a suspenseful sequence in Mexico. Fans expecting a grandiose shootout at the finish will probably be disappointed. Hour of the Gun is an uncompromised Law & Order western.

It's not hard to guess why the film did not do well theatrically. In 1967 the country was still in the mood for escapist, fun westerns with a boozy John Wayne hitting people and Maureen O'Hara falling in the mud. Sober westerns didn't draw audiences, who were just discovering Sergio Leone's playful shooting-gallery Spaghettis. Also, as good as James Garner is, he couldn't sidestep his smart-mouthed Maverick personality. He tried his luck in a variety of genre works, like the Chandler update Marlowe, but never really hit paydirt until returning to television and the Maverick-like Rockford Files. Not only does Garner's Earp not joke around, he has no feminine interest in the film. We only see a few women in longshots. So much for general audience appeal.

After a string of major successes (The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape) John Sturges put out a number of what would be called "interesting" films. The only outright mistake was 1965's abortive The Hallelujah Trail, a comedy with no laughs. Besides a couple of respectable exceptions (The Satan Bug, Joe Kidd) his career went downhill with Ice Station Zebra and the simply awful Marooned. Still, he remains one of the most creative and interesting of the Mirisch stable of directors, and Hour of the Gun deserves to be pushed closer to the top of the list of great westerns.

Buy It at Lowest Price on Amazon

Rating:
2.5 out of 5 by Book123