Oh no we’re back to the really bad westerns. I’d actually had a good run of it lately with solid westerns but this one falls into all of the old traps. You have the horse getting shot because he was injured, the terrible romance starting with a guy forcing himself onto a lady, terrible characters everywhere, yeesh. Yeah there was no real saving this movie and it only got worse the more you went into the film.

The film starts by introducing us to 4 crooks trying to rob a bank. Fortunately the safe was empty so they are foiled and have to run off. They figure they will bump off another bank next but along the way bump into an old man and his daughter. All 4 are immediately interested in the girl although they are all told to mind their business. Unfortunately she isn’t the smartest character either and tends to allow herself to be in situations with them alone. She even leaves her room in the dead of night during a storm to walk around which wasn’t smart. She isn’t afraid of anybody which is not a real smart tactic in the west. Can her father keep her safe?

Her character is just so bad though. Somehow the film tries to present the whole thing as romantic when the guy is really gruff with her and not respecting her boundaries at all. I’ve seen plenty of films with romances that have not aged well but this one might take the cake. It just really doesn’t make any sense and it’s as if she got Stockholm syndrome immediately. It just doesn’t make any sense and this causes her to run away from her father which ends up injuring her horse who has to be shot. She has no real sense of safety or security and just brings more and more trouble with her.

Obviously the 4 crooks are to blame here as well but they are villains. You’re not expecting much out of them in the first place. In particular there’s really one guy who ends up getting with her several times even though he tries to act like he’s above all that. The guy has no real standards or self respect, it’s no wonder why he has not been a very successful thief at the moment. He’s just going to keep on fumbling at the end.

A big problem with having villains as the lead figures in a film is that they tend to be unlikable and this one is no exception. Every time the characters are planning, you’re just hoping that they will fail. The problem is that we don’t even get to meet the cops until near the end and when they show up, the main guy isn’t the most level headed fighter. He lets himself be baited into a fight multiple times instead of just arresting the villain. When you are the sheriff you have to put the people first and that means just shutting down any villain who approaches. There is really no time for personal vendettas at that point. Then he was even losing in that fight which was unfortunate.

I would argue that none of the villains really learned their lesson either. The film definitely has a body count so at least a few of them got bumped off but then for the last one, he really only surrenders because he has to. I would still think of him as a villain the whole time and the girl made the wrong decision in wanting to be with him. This is taking the whole “liking the bad boy” thing to a crazy level. He even gives all the worst answers to her questions about if he’s been with someone before and she still doesn’t care. She just says she’ll love him more than the others.

Deciding to just sacrifice your happy life to be with a criminal is something I just couldn’t understand. So that’s already a whole lot against the film and as for the fights, well at least we got some. The Indians show up and they managed to take down the guy by the empty shop in the middle of nowhere. I’m always up for a good gunfight but it’s not like it’s anything particularly unique here. So the film needed to have other solid areas to really keep this above water and unfortunately that just never happened.

Maybe letting the heroine’s father go all out against the crooks would have helped the film to be more on the solid side. He should have finished off the first crook when he caught the guy with his daughter and from there he should have opened fire on the others. Even if he ended up losing or got shot back, it would have been a good moment to show that he wasn’t messing around. The guy had a pretty good reputation for being a solid shot after all so showing him take down a few of these punks would have been nice.

Maybe also exploiting how the team was always fighting. There were two members of the group who were always going at it after all. Trick them into fighting and then you beat the other two. It wouldn’t take much to start a fight between them from what we saw so that would have really been a fun way to go. Ah well, too bad that wasn’t the case here, would have been a more interesting movie.

Overall, I would not recommend this one. It needed to have had a much bigger emphasis on the sheriff for starters. At least that would have left things off on a good note. Without that, well the film was not really going anywhere. The town had some interesting characters like one lady who always carried a gun with her. The film should have been building up to the 4 crooks trying to raid this town and then getting blown away. That would have been an infinitely better story. Also the heroine really should have been portrayed to be at least a little more intelligent and not just acting completely oblivious to everything the whole time. They literally offer her candy like a baby and she accepts. Not her best moment. This is one of the weaker westerns that I’ve seen and I highly recommend staying far away from it.

Overall 3/10