L'homme au fusil

Clint Tollinger arrives in a small western town looking for his estranged wife, who left him and now runs the local show saloon. His presence is greeting by suspicion but when the town leaders discover the nature of Tollinger's business they propose that they employ him to clean up the town of the problem of Dade Holman's violent influence. The solution may be just as bad as the problem but they take the risk.

With a nice dark character with a lot of anger and pain in the front of the film this western is enjoyable tough. Although the plot is fairly typical of a western b-movie, the tone and edge to it means that it comes over as much more. The basic story sees Tollinger taking on the rule of Holman but it has undercurrents of pain and anger as the lead confronts his wife. We meet Tollinger as a gentle, quiet man but gradually we see him to be violent, heartless and full of bitterness; it is solid development that is at the heart of the film's dark tone. Of course it still follows the genre traditions and will appeal to fans of such while also having enough else going on to make it differ from the Technicolor westerns of the same period.

Wilson is responsible for the dark tone as both writer and director; shot is stark black and white he frames some interesting shots and is not afraid to be aggressive or shocking considering the period. Mitchum takes to his character well and always seemed to enjoy the darker more complex characters that some of his westerns would serve him up with. Sterling does well with her firm character until near the end where she becomes more of a genre staple. Support behind these two is roundly good but the film is very much Mitchum's and he knows it.

Overall it is a solid western that gradually gets down to just going where you expect it to. However for the vast majority it has a dark tone and feel to it that makes it much more interesting and more likely to appeal beyond the limitations of those that like the colourful b-movie westerns of the period.

A western that makes many contemporary film directors blush with envy: perfect setting, intelligent dialogues, socio-psychological soundness in the script, good acting, camera direction and music without errors. A semi-unknown jewel that delights the intelligent viewer.

There are westerns and there are westerns with many actors and then there is a Robert Mitchum western....in this film Mitchum plays a no nonsense, hard as nails character as a so called "town tamer"....he follows his estranged wife played coldly by Jan Sterling as she is the madame of a group of dance hall girls...Mitchum wants to make amends with his ex-wife Sterling but she is cold as ice toward him. Mitchum accepts the job as a combo sheriff and "town tamer" and then manages to shoot up the whole place and fight with anyone who gets in his way....he does not believe in taking any so called prisoners. Along the way Mitchum defends a local young man and his wife who are being terrorized by the local hoodlum who runs the town from his distant ranch. The town council soon gets very wary of Mitchum and wants to see him kicked out of the job...Mitchum in his normal, cold and calculating way tells the town to take a hike - that he wants to continue in his job. Check out a very young Angie Dickinson who plays a dance hall girl...must have been one of her first roles. In the end a good gun fighting scene with a set up dance hall girl and a town misfit played by Leo Gordon who along with the local kingpin rancher tries to wipe out Mitchum. Mitchum handles this role like a pro - cold and calculating, always looking over his shoulder for the next confrontation. One is never far away. A very young Karen Sharpe has a good role as a young housewife infatuated with Mitchum. In the end Mitchum is shot up and winds up in the arms of his estranged wife Sterling. Solid western, very enjoyable....Mitchum up to top standards as a hard charging sheriff. One of Mitchum's best B westerns.

In Man With the Gun Robert Mitchum plays Clint Tollinger, a man who hires his gun out to clean out lawless towns in the west of which there seems to be a never ending supply. But he comes to this particular town in search of his estranged wife, Jan Sterling who since she left him has taken up the occupation as Madam of the local bordello. Of course the girls which include Barbara Lawrence and the still unknown Angie Dickinson are still called dance hall girls, but the Code was slowly cracking.

It's by chance he gets drawn into the town politics involving a big cattle baron who runs roughshod over every thing and every one in the general vicinity. The town council hires him to clean out the place of gunmen and sheriff Henry Hull makes it official by making him his deputy and giving him a free hand as per Mitchum's terms. The results ain't pretty.

Mitchum's a grim, bitter man heading the cast of a grim and bitter western. Part of his bitterness is the estrangement between him and Sterling. There's quite a history behind it as the movie shows.

Man With a Gun is a good western, but I have to say I was let down by the climatic gunfight at the end. It takes place on a deserted town street while most of the cast is at a town council meeting. James Westerfield plays a part similar to J. Edward Bromberg's role in Jesse James. He sets up a nasty ambush for Mitchum. But I think the plan fell flat in the writing. If Mitchum didn't suspect he was being set up before he did with gunman Leo Gordon following him, he was not the smart guy we'd been led to believe.

Of course if you want to see what I'm talking about then by all means see Man With a Gun.

Clint Tollinger arrives in a small town looking for his estranged wife and news of his daughter, tho he finds her, the chance of any sort of reconciliation is very slim. Whilst here, the sheriff and the important townsfolk learn of Tollinger's reputation as a pistol specialist town tamer. As they are living in fear of a mysterious landowner who is stripping the town from them bit by bit, they hold a meeting that chooses to hire Tollinger to rid the town of it's unsavoury elements.

Man With The Gun seems to be either a forgotten piece or a vastly under seen one, for at the time of me writing this, it has just over 200 votes and a paltry 9 user comments written for it on IMDb. It's a shame on either score because although the production values scream out that this is a "B" movie Western, this is a fine entry in the Western genre. That the piece takes on a rather standard plot theme of an harangued town turning to an avenging dark angel, probably hasn't done the film any favours over the years, I myself read the synopsis and thought it's just another in the line of similarly themed pictures. Yet I was pleasantly surprised to find a darkly dramatic picture boasting many enjoyable moments, both technically and as a functioning story.

Robert Mitchum is in the lead as Tollinger, perfectly cast, he strides thru the picture like some brooding menace. We often talk about the screen presence that John Wayne and Charlton Heston had (justifiably of course), Mitchum is right up there with the best of them. One sequence here sees him standing in the shadows at the back of a room as a meeting takes place, we don't see his face, but we can feel that piercing brood staring out at us! The rest of the cast are very much in Mitchum's shadow, so really it's solely with the big man that the films acting credentials are high. Perhaps it's unfair to single out Ted de Corsia for a kick? but Man With The Gun's minor failings are with its villains, and sadly de Corsia is lacking any sort of villainesque menace.

The score from Alex North is excellently layered (fans of Spartacus will certainly be pricking their ears up) and the cinematography from Lee Garmes is highly impressive when one realises that the majority of this picture was shot on the studio lot. Directed and co-written by first time director Richard Wilson, Man With The Gun holds few surprises for the genre, but it's dark in tone, violent and above all else, highly watchable. 7.5/10