It’s time for a western that I can’t say I had heard of before. It’s a pretty interesting tale about what happens when you go into the wrong town. You’ve probably watched or at least read some stories with a similar premise but usually it’s more for a short adventure and not the full length movie. You have a bit of a mystery going on here as well and then eventually the chase starts. It’s a good film although I do think the main character could have been a lot more solid.

The film starts off with Ben arriving in a own looking for a lady. Nobody wants to talk about her though and it’s clear that something shady happened. Ben isn’t super quick on the uptake about this though and keeps on asking questions to the point where he is beat up. He eventually gets someone to spill the beans and so now the whole town’s posse is after him. Can he manage to stay alive and take them to justice or is he doomed? Fortunately he will not be alone on this adventure.

Ben is a nice enough guy but the fact that he shows up drunk does not put him in the best shape to fight these guys off. He is too quick to go into the beer bottle and it also seems to make him not really notice the danger of his situation at times. These villains aren’t exactly subtle after all, they act extremely shady right out of the gate. Ben has to be prepared to take them all down if he wants to get his answers because otherwise he will be the one in a messy grave.

I’d say something the film does really well with the long runtime is developing the characters. You actually get to know just about everyone in the town rather well. You have the Sheriff who initially seems rather reasonable compared to the others but definitely has a dark side and really likes the power that he possesses. You’ve got his deputy who is on the older side but wants to still prove that he can fight with the best of them. There’s a kid who looks up to the posse and wants to be like them when he grows up, which always causes his mother to worry a lot.

The mother is mainly kept out of the loop on things but tries her best to keep her son on the straight and narrow. Then you have a few other members of the posse who are basically just thugs that really like to abuse their power. Long story short, you really don’t want to come to this town. The lady who went missing certainly didn’t pick a great place to go. The story doesn’t portray her as the nicest character around either but even so that’s no excuse for the other brutes going after her.

In a rough town like this it feels like you either make friends with the strongest one and stay relatively safe or you have to get out of there fast. It’s one of the scarier parts about the olden days since you couldn’t just drive out of there in your car. Walking would likely not be a good idea either so in the end while you’re waiting for the train anything can happen. Particularly when you have no friends to help you.

We do get the obligatory gunfight near the end in a rather prolonged gunfight. I’d say we mainly have two pretty long gunfights here and as always you do wonder how they don’t hit each other a bit sooner. There are times where the characters have no cover and still manage to come out on top. I suppose accuracy wasn’t all that back in the day so I can cut that a bit of slack. I tend to enjoy gunfights either way even when there isn’t a lot of connecting. It’s just fun to watch.

The action is on point here. I would say the only thing holding the film back is that it can feel a bit long at times. The mystery isn’t super captivating because you basically know how it’ll play out from the start and you’re just waiting for Ben to find out. The movie actually tricked me in that sense as I thought someone was dead from the start when that wasn’t the case. Ultimately it doesn’t really change things though. A better main character would make a world of difference since he wouldn’t just be running the whole time.

The title is appropriate since the second half is all about Ben running. Even by that point he’s asking for why he won’t be put on trial and that’s why I say he’s slow on the uptake. It’s pretty obvious that even if there was a trial, it wouldn’t be a fair one. At least he is a good shot and can fight once the dust is finally settled and he knows what is going on. It took some time but at least it did end up happening.

The most annoying character was the kid though. He froze up during the first gunfight, never really knew how to make his own decisions, and was easily manipulated. When you think about an annoying kid in any form of media, this is the kind of kid you’re thinking about. He thinks that he’s a man but doesn’t have the skills to back it up.

Overall, Stranger on the Run is a good film. It’s not the best western that I’ve seen but it certainly does beat a lot of others. It gets more right than wrong which is always the most important thing. It would be nice if Ben could have been a bit stronger and able to hold his own here against all of the thugs but realistically the numbers were not exactly in his favor. If he played his cards right he could have bumped them off a few at a time but of course that would be risky and ultimately he would be known as an outlaw. Ensuring there were 0 survivors and 0 witnesses would be really tough.

Overall 6/10