La veuve et le tueur

Anne Francis is about to hung for the murder of her husband, the son of the local Ponderosa owner John Litel. But her uncle sends Chuck Connors to rescue her and he does, taking her across the Texas state line to New Mexico territory where he, Robert Burton is the local Ponderosa owner. And due to Burton's influence, New Mexico will not honor extradition. What to do, but hire out for The Hired Gun.

In this case it's Rory Calhoun who gets hired for $5000.00 dollars to deliver Francis back to Texas for the sentence to be carried out. He's even deputized to make what is kidnapping have some trapping of legality.

Of course with their time on the trail Calhoun and Francis start getting acquainted. I don't think I have to go any further.

The Hired Gun was almost like watching two different films. A plot line where Francis is being given some unwanted attentions by her rescuer Connors is left dangling. Quite frankly I can't blame Connors for expecting some kind of manifestation of that gratitude. Then when Calhoun and Francis cross the state line, it's like a whole new movie started. I think some writing might have changed midpoint in the film or it was to be a whole bigger type of western when originally conceived.

With stuff like The Hired Gun which Calhoun also produced not being that well received, no wonder Rory Calhoun opted for a TV and he would star in his own television series, The Texan very shortly.

Ellen Belden (Anne Francis) is set to be hanged for her husband's murder in Texas. Ellen's uncle has one of his ranch hands bust her out of jail and escort across the New Mexico border. The father of the dead man hires a gunman named Gil McCord (Rory Calhoun) to go into New Mexico and bring Ellen back to face her sentence. But is Ellen really guilty or is someone else responsible for the murder?

Overall, I'd call this MGM programmer a bit dull. One of my main issues is that The Hired Gun's plot offers few, if any, surprises. Almost everything is predictable after about 15 minutes. Things like: Is Ellen guilty? Who really killed Ellen's husband? What will happen with Ellen and McCord? It doesn't take a fortune teller to predict the answers to these questions.

In addition, try as it might, The Hired Gun never has an appropriate Western feel to it. The sets don't seem authentic, the wardrobe looks too modern, and Anne Francis is more Honey West than Old West. I know budget constraints probably played a role in this, but the lack of a Western feel really took me out of the movie.

I suppose of all the cast, I enjoyed Chuck Connors as Judd Farrow, the ranch hand, as much as anyone. I felt for the man as time-after-time Ellen rebuffed his advances, yet he kept coming back for more.

4/10

Badly made western featuring Calhoun as a gunfighter paid $5000 to go find an escaped murderer-- who happens to be Anne Francis. He does so, and of course, everyone is trying to stop him. Terrible performances, terrible script, lack luster direction, wall to wall music-- all in all, a really bad movie. And it's only about 72 minutes long. Made back in the days when westerns ruled on the TV screens, it was shot widescreen, with only one or two well shot scenes, the rest of the time, it looked like they did one take and moved on. Classic scenes even included four Indians who were obviously white guys in grease paint. Good for a laugh, that's about it. TCM shows this once in a while-- a real hoot.

The 1950s were to movie westerns what the 40s was to film noir so it's always kinda shocking to see an oater made at this time be so friggin ordinary as this offering from Ray Nazarro. Although maybe not so shocking when you consider the fact that Budd Boetticher, one of the era's best western directors, called Nazarro the "ten day picture guy". And of those ten I would guess that half a day, at most, was spent on the screenplay/story since previous IMDB reviewers have written of its stunning predictability and unoriginality. I do, however, disagree with the previous reviewer who called it "beyond mediocre". Indeed, it is the very quintessence of average. Or, in other words, a solid C.

If you make it past the first 40 minutes you will find the remainder of the film slightly improved but only slightly.

The highlight comes in the first 10 minutes when the double speed the horse chase and it looks like they forgot to slow it back down lol.

Not much for Rory to work with here and the villains lack any real teeth.