Pistola veloce

Fast paced but unsatisfying Western, starring Audy Murphy in a role he played more than once -- the tortured soul who wants to do the right thing, even though everyone is against him.

Unfortunately, director Sidney Salknow presents us with a very simplistic plot and very two-dimensional characters. The film has the `small' look of a television episode, with overly neat and overly well-lite sets (even at night!).

Still, the basic idea is good. Murphy is enroute to his home town to face up to the citizens who think he murdered the two sons of a local rancher, despite the fact that it was self-defense. Before arriving at the town, Murphy runs into the gang of outlaws he used to ride with. He finds out that they plan to rob the bank and burn the town to the ground.

Murphy tries to warn the citizens, but their prejudice against him makes them reluctant to listen. But Sheriff James Best, an old friend of Murphy's, DOES believe, and he organizes the citizen to defend the town.

The plot does plenty of unexpected things on its way to a reasonably satisfying climax, giving the film some merit in spite of itself. Merry Anders, the love interest, plays a key role in the climax, redeeming her less than stellar performance in the rest of the film. If you love Westerns (like me) and you're prepared for mediocre acting and lackluster direction, you can have fun with this one. Think of it as an imaginative amateur film that was made on a shoestring budget, starring a popular war hero who succeeded in a second career as an actor.

On a personal note, Audy's `rig' (his gun and gun belt) is a whole lot more appealing and practical than those in most big-budget Westerns. And he doesn't wear it half-way to his knees! Western fans notice things like this. . .

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.

This western from the Audie Murphy's second part of career is really lame, not precisely boring, but so tedious, predictable, despite a Ted De Corsia's presence, in a role that reminded me a bit some Dan Duryea's characters. The villain who seemed to be at first sight the hero's good pal. But it's watchable for Audie Murphy's fans. Forget NO NAME ON THE BULLET, in terms of Murph's characters, here, you feel that any Rory Calhoun, Dale Robertson or George Montgomery would have also done the job the same. The early sixties are recognizable if you watch closely enough the production design and story telling. This seems to evoke the AC Lyles' productions, involving old timers only. But strangely never Audie Murphy by the way. Very Strange that I just realize it now, when writing this review, that Audie Murphy never played in an AC Lyle's productions. With directors such as Lesley Selander, RG Springsteen, William Claxton....

This is an enjoyable Audie Murphy western.

Simple story with some nice drama but the highlights of the film all belong to the 'Spangler' character. He is dynamic, boisterous, over the top and often hilarious (intentional or otherwise).

Nice way to spend an afternoon :)