This is the fourth Sam Fuller film I've seen starting in order of what's on DVD. The film looks great in cinema scope black and white.
The main and biggest flaw of the film is it's confusing and hard to tell just exactly what is going on and how each character came to be in the story. It wasn't until about an hour into it that I figured out the main three good guys were marshals and I'm still not sure if the one was or not.
Random members of the 40 thieves show up to shoot people and get tossed into jail just to get walked out the next day. To have 40 bad guys in a gang is quite ambitious but I'm not sure why Sam Fuller went for such a high count. Just made it a lot harder to focus on what was happening and hard to pay attention to all the new faces in case you thought they might play a bigger role later on.
It's a very disjointed picture. It's a film that feels like it wasn't finished in time or had poor editing. If the film were longer it would given more time to properly flesh out all the intricacies of the story.
The best part though and this is a spoiler is towards the end when Barbara Stanwyck is taken hostage by one of her own gang. Instead of having the main character shoot the bad guy he just shoots Stanwyck then takes out the bad guy. Very bad ass decision and refreshing to see in a western.
Overall it's not that great of a picture. I would be shocked if someone was able to pick up everything on the first watch and trust me this isn't meant to be seen a bunch of times to catch everything like a Fellini or Godard film.
The main and biggest flaw of the film is it's confusing and hard to tell just exactly what is going on and how each character came to be in the story. It wasn't until about an hour into it that I figured out the main three good guys were marshals and I'm still not sure if the one was or not.
Random members of the 40 thieves show up to shoot people and get tossed into jail just to get walked out the next day. To have 40 bad guys in a gang is quite ambitious but I'm not sure why Sam Fuller went for such a high count. Just made it a lot harder to focus on what was happening and hard to pay attention to all the new faces in case you thought they might play a bigger role later on.
It's a very disjointed picture. It's a film that feels like it wasn't finished in time or had poor editing. If the film were longer it would given more time to properly flesh out all the intricacies of the story.
The best part though and this is a spoiler is towards the end when Barbara Stanwyck is taken hostage by one of her own gang. Instead of having the main character shoot the bad guy he just shoots Stanwyck then takes out the bad guy. Very bad ass decision and refreshing to see in a western.
Overall it's not that great of a picture. I would be shocked if someone was able to pick up everything on the first watch and trust me this isn't meant to be seen a bunch of times to catch everything like a Fellini or Godard film.