Review: Hour of the Gun

Beginning with the infamous Gunfight at the OK Corral, this film concerns the ruthless vendetta waged between Wyatt Earp (James Garner) and the gang of outlaws led by Ike Clanton (Robert Ryan). When Clanton and his boys hit Wyatt close to home, this just makes town marshal Wyatt crave justice even more. However, tubercular right-hand man Doc Holliday (Jason Robards Jr.) is worried that Wyatt is making this too personal, and not just about legal right and wrong. Is it justice he is seeking, or cold-blooded revenge? Jon Voight plays Curly Bill Brocius, one of Clanton’s men, William Schallert plays a judge, Albert Salmi plays the lawyer for the Clantons, and Michael Tolan plays Pete Spence, another Clanton gang member Wyatt seeks out.

 

Director John Sturges (“The Magnificent Seven”, “The Great Escape”, “Bad Day at Black Rock”) apparently made this 1967 western to make up for what he saw as a lesser version of the Wyatt Earp/OK Corral story previously with “Gunfight at the OK Corral”. This one also begins with the words ‘This is how it happened’. It’s not a better film than “Gunfight”, and no this isn’t anywhere near close to how it happened. That said, it’s still a pretty solid piece of entertainment, so long as you don’t think about what it’s trying to pass off as truth. For the most part I was able to do that, but in regards to the characters of Doc Holliday and especially Ike Clanton, I found the bullshit too much to ignore given the film openly claims to be telling the truth.

 

 James Garner makes for a surprisingly (and effectively) grim Wyatt Earp, which may be the closest Hollywood has ever gotten to the real guy, who if you know your history, turned to the law more out of opportunism than an innate decency and morality. I liked this Wyatt, and in fact I liked the film’s overall grim tone. However, to counter Wyatt’s rather ruthless behaviour, Sturges and screenwriter Edward Anhalt (“Panic in the Streets”, “The Young Lions”) rewrite the character of Doc Holliday to act as Wyatt’s conscience, which is absurd and just plain wrong. Jason Robards is perfectly fine as gambler Doc, as the character is written. He’s the third best film Doc Holliday, but that is mostly because Kirk Douglas and subsequently Val Kilmer were absolutely brilliant in the role (Though admittedly Robards plays the character more sedately, which isn’t an uninteresting choice). However, it just wasn’t necessary to rewrite the character of Doc to say what the film was trying to say about Wyatt. It sullies not only the character, but the film itself. If this were just a random outlaw in a fictional film, the moralising would be fine by me. But this is supposed to be Doc, and Sturges is claiming historical accuracy. It’s just not right.

 

The character of Ike Clanton comes off even worse, despite a terrific performance from Robert Ryan. This simply isn’t Ike Clanton, so Ryan’s performance is all for nought. The character with that name here is your standard western posse leader bad guy with certain members of the law on his payroll. Ike Clanton, the real guy, was much, much closer to the snivelling, cowardly moron Stephen Lang brilliantly portrayed in “Tombstone”, and it’s a pretty well-known thing, too. Clanton was never a leader, he was a dipshit henchman who was unarmed and ran from the infamous Gunfight at the OK Corral. Dramatic license is one thing, this is just plain wrong, and while it won’t ruin the experience for the uninitiated, to anyone else, it certainly stands out like a sore thumb. On a smaller note, a young Jon Voight just doesn’t cut it as Curly Bill Brocius, who is a nondescript henchman in this outing. However, I’ll let it slide because only “Tombstone” seems to treat his character with importance anyway.

 

The film definitely has its positives, including really nice cinematography by Lucien Ballard (“The Killing”, “The Wild Bunch”) and a terrific score by Jerry Goldsmith (“A Patch of Blue”, “Planet of the Apes”, “The Omen”). Ballard’s use of light and shadow in the night scenes is especially effective. The opening scene is a helluva tense way to start a film, too. It’s usually something that you’d find as the climax to other versions of this story.

 

A terrifically grim, charmless James Garner in perhaps his finest big screen performance heads this solid western. Unfortunately, despite his work and other positive attributes, the fact that the film comes billed as truth and strays very far from it pulls the film down considerably. If this were a straight western with no connections (claimed or achieved) to history, it could’ve been a cracker. As is, it’s just solid entertainment, and the latter “Tombstone” (which recreates a few moments from this one) simply outclasses it, even with its own strays from history (It’s probably the closest to being historically accurate, though). Still, at least it tries to set the record straight about the character of Wyatt Earp, who wasn’t the upstanding and unbending moral force other films (“Tombstone” included) purport.

 

Rating: B-