This is old formula Western, which of course is better than the new formula crap that was shoved down our throats from about 1965 till about 2000, whether we liked it or not.
This was made in the days when the characters in the Westerns were written to look like mature grown up people who knew what rugged life was about. Lets face it. The spaghetti westerns ruined the genre for a quarter of a century, because the characters came across like spoiled brats who never walked outside of an arcade room.
This Western is loosely about a fictional part of Bat Masterson's life. It would be better if it wasn't Bat, so we could accept the plausibility of the story, but that doesn't matter. This story is certainly more feasible than the "Tombstone" version of Wyatt Earp.
What sells the story is the characters, the good and the bad guys. The two bad guys are very three dimensional. One is a little loco, so his fate is understandable.
The final gunfight with the more rational bad guy at the end was what weighted this down. At the end, we see a change in the bad guy, not that he's good, but that he's somewhat alert to the changing of the times. I thought the final gunfight was contrived, and it would've been better with a more toned down ending.
Still, it is the characters that make this worth watching.
This was made in the days when the characters in the Westerns were written to look like mature grown up people who knew what rugged life was about. Lets face it. The spaghetti westerns ruined the genre for a quarter of a century, because the characters came across like spoiled brats who never walked outside of an arcade room.
This Western is loosely about a fictional part of Bat Masterson's life. It would be better if it wasn't Bat, so we could accept the plausibility of the story, but that doesn't matter. This story is certainly more feasible than the "Tombstone" version of Wyatt Earp.
What sells the story is the characters, the good and the bad guys. The two bad guys are very three dimensional. One is a little loco, so his fate is understandable.
The final gunfight with the more rational bad guy at the end was what weighted this down. At the end, we see a change in the bad guy, not that he's good, but that he's somewhat alert to the changing of the times. I thought the final gunfight was contrived, and it would've been better with a more toned down ending.
Still, it is the characters that make this worth watching.