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'The Quick Gun' never exerts itself, but it's still a western that (only just) held my interest from start-to-finish.

The premise is watchable enough, which is fortunate as the acting, dialogue and fight scenes aren't great. All of the acting is on the wooden side, with the exception of Ted de Corsia who is pretty good as Spangler. The cast are all likeable, though don't quite give top performances in my opinion.

Dialogue-wise it's boring, there's quite a few moments with blocks of speaking. The combat isn't pleasing on the eye either, given its slow nature. The music and camera work is OK, I guess.

If you want to sit back and chill with a western that doesn't take much effort, then this is one for you. It's fine to watch, if underwhelming overall.

This is the third time this story by Steve Fisher has been done. The first time was "Top Gun" starring Sterling Hayden done in 1955 in black and white, and then done again as "Noose for a Gunman" in 1960 starring Jim Davis, who later became Jock Ewing on "Dallas" (Ted DeCorsia even played the same role as in "The Quick Gun" with John Dehner taking the main villain role in "Top Gun"). All three are good if you like the old fashion type westerns, which I do. They were simple, your kids and grandkids could watch them, and they always had a good ending. Need more of them today. To me, Audie Murphy will always be a hero on the battlefield (The most decorated soldier in WWII including the medal of honor)and on the screen.

It's your standard bad guy vs. good bad guy western. Clint Cooper returns to the town that ran him off and reluctantly agrees to stay and fight the coming horde of thieves. Though this is a very predictable plot, it doesn't feature the huge leaps that are common in some westerns from the era.

Watching this movie 41 years after it's release and judging it by today's standards isn't really fair. It is from a simpler time in history and as a result seems naive to us.

Today you would never see scenes that are supposed to occur at night happening in obvious sunlight. The melo-drama is passe. Everyone knows that gunshots are messy, except in old westerns. Having said all of that, fans of the genre and Audie Murphey will no doubt enjoy this film.

I also enjoyed watching James Best before his Dukes of Hazard days. While I am not one who thinks that his performances as Sheriff of Hazard County are un-noteworthy, this role really opened my eyes to his versatility and talent as an actor.

Director Sidney Salkow made quite a few westerns over the course of his career, and the one thing they have in common is that none of them are particularly good. If you want to see why, then watch this picture. Salkow has no sense of pacing whatsoever (a trait even more evident in his "Sitting Bull" from 1954, which has to be among the most disjointed pictures ever made). Stuff happens, then nothing happens for a while, then stuff happens again, then nothing happens for a while again, and so on, and so on, and so on. That describes this picture pretty much to a T, and what's even worse is that, unlike many of Salkow's other westerns, this one actually has a cast of experienced western actors in roles both large and small: James Best, Frank Ferguson, Rex Holman, Rick Vallin, Frank Gerstle and Mort Mills, among others, have done good work in other westerns, and Audie Murphy is earnest as always, but there's not much they can do with this. They try hard, but Salkow's limp direction and the drivel they're forced to recite kill whatever small chances there may have been of making something out of nothing. Even though the plot is somewhat tired, good--or even halfway competent--writing could have made this picture at least watchable. The writing here is laughable hack work, just cliché piled on top of cliché, overheated dramatics, eye-rolling villainy--it seems more like a William S. Hart western from 1915 than an Audie Murphy western from 1964. The last part of the picture picks up a bit--"picks up" being a relative term, considering that virtually nothing has happened up to that point--when the outlaw gang attacks the town, but even that isn't in the least exciting. Salkow's tenuous skills as a filmmaker completely evaporate when the "action" starts (again, check out his 1954 "Sitting Bull") and this picture is no exception--a few desultory gunshots and a bad guy falls off his horse, another gunshot or two and a townsman falls down (it's hard to tell if it's because he was "shot" or if he just dropped from exhaustion--the outlaws and the townsmen in this picture have to be among the OLDEST people to engage in a gun battle in the history of westerns) and the same thing is pretty much repeated for the next eight or ten minutes. There's no sense of excitement, danger, or anything other than boredom. In the end, of course, everything works out exactly as you knew it would, but it's not really worth sitting through this dull, lumbering mess to have your suspicions confirmed.

Audie Murphy is one of my favorite actors, in westerns he's real good. Clint Cooper returns to the town he was run out of, 2 years prior to the start of the movie, and he Audie, tells a flash back-like story. He returns because he wants to redeem himself, and in the beginning it's tense, but as per usual, the town begins to let Clint Cooper know, everything isn't as it seems. So, without giving the plot away and telling how well lit the scenes are, I will just end by saying if you like to root for the good guy turned bad guy, turned good guy, then you might like this film. One funny thing is seeing a rough tough rancher with a bright purple shirt on. Something tells me, that wouldn't have happened back in the day. The trouble starts when Tom Morris finds out that Clint Cooper is back in town! Tom want's revenge for Clint killing his two sons in a gun fight while Tom Morris and his sons were trying to steal Clint's families land. So the towns people hate Clint and want him gone! But the town doesn't have time to run him off this time. Spangler's on his way with his gang to rob the town and burn it to the ground if "I feel like it, nobody could stop us". Clint's been thinking about the cute little school marm he left behind, figures he can come home and pick up where he left off! But she's gonna marry Clint's old buddy the Town Sheriff. So watch and see how all this untangles! But be careful 'couse Clint's gun "got to fast"