The Gunfight at Dodge City (1959)

One of the problems I have about films where characters make long earnest speeches about how hard it is to be a gunfighter and how damaging violence is (as Joel McCrea does in the opening scene here) is that is can come across as a bit hypocritical from the film-makers, when everyone knows we’re watching it to see some exciting violence, and in fact a gunfight is even advertised in the title.

To be honest though, that isn’t the main issue with “The Gunfight at Dodge City”: really the film is just a bit too predictable to be interesting, with very little in the way of interesting characterisation to distract from the plot. In fact, the hero’s aversion to gunfighting is rapidly forgotten and only selectively remembered later. There is one notable diversion from genre norms relating to the romance sub-plot: the hero spends most of the film mooning after the pretty, chaste preacher’s daughter and ignoring the “unsuitable” saloon-owner lady. I was pleasantly surprised to find that he actually decides he doesn’t like the good girl, and ends up with the saloon-owner. I was all ready to write a rant about how predictable that part was before the twist at the end. show/hide spoiler.

Mostly, I think this should just have been better: there’s a good cast (Joel McCrea and Julie Adams are generally reliable, although Julie Adams doesn’t have a whole lot to do as is often the case), and it’s competently made with what’s obviously a medium budget. There just isn’t much tension or drama so it’s difficult to recommend it.

As a side-note, much of the initial plot set-up appears to be surprisingly historically accurate, as far as these things go.

I watched this again about 8 years later and forgot I’d written a review, so here’s the new review. I don’t think my opinion has changed significantly…

A fairly middling “town-tamer” western. It’s watchable, but nothing particularly unusual. Joel McCrea plays Bat Masterson in a plot that has only a slight resemble to history (but uses occasion sprinklings of historical fact for credibility). Masterson moves to dodge city, buys a stake in a saloon, and then ends up becoming the Sheriff after his brother is shot.

The most interesting part of the plot is his romance with with the preacher’s daughter (Julie Adams), although it’s spoiled somewhat because McCrea is obviously significantly too old for her. He ends up admitting that she’s unsuitable for him and too morally inflexible after she’s unable to understand why he committed a crime for “morally right” reasons.