I'm a big Gary Cooper fan, but even the Coop's by this time ageing skills can't rescue this comedy-western from mediocrity.
The plot is contrived, scenes are too long, characters and situations are poorly drawn - in truth, as a movie it just drags and sags to its predictable happy-ending finish.
The problem for me is that the older Cooper got, the less believable his country bumpkin persona convinces. Here familiarity really does breed contempt, and while his Melody Jones character gets into some heated clinches with the alluring but otherwise out of place Loretta Young, in truth there's little other chemistry between them and you can't imagine her really throwing over the at least mildly dangerous desperado Dan Duryea, whose abilities are wasted here on an underwritten part, for slow-walking, slow talking Jones.
The action sequences are pretty inactive, to be frank, the laughs are few and far between (Jones' hat falling off every time he enters a room is about the height of the humour), conveyed by pretty lumpen direction and by the end you realise that the film is something of an epitaph for the comedy-western genre. Tougher, more realistic westerns were just around the corner (Ford's "My Darling Clementine", Gregory Peck's "The Gunfighter" and James Stewart's collaborations with Anthony Mann, to name but a few examples) and Cooper was to find his last great role when he eschewed the overdone country hick in favour of the dignified seriousness of the marshal in the classic "High Noon".
I love the Coasters' hit song of the same name as this film, penned by the great Leiber and Stoller partnership from a few years later than this and before watching, had hoped it had been inspired by a rollickingly funny and richly entertaining movie.
I was wrong.
The plot is contrived, scenes are too long, characters and situations are poorly drawn - in truth, as a movie it just drags and sags to its predictable happy-ending finish.
The problem for me is that the older Cooper got, the less believable his country bumpkin persona convinces. Here familiarity really does breed contempt, and while his Melody Jones character gets into some heated clinches with the alluring but otherwise out of place Loretta Young, in truth there's little other chemistry between them and you can't imagine her really throwing over the at least mildly dangerous desperado Dan Duryea, whose abilities are wasted here on an underwritten part, for slow-walking, slow talking Jones.
The action sequences are pretty inactive, to be frank, the laughs are few and far between (Jones' hat falling off every time he enters a room is about the height of the humour), conveyed by pretty lumpen direction and by the end you realise that the film is something of an epitaph for the comedy-western genre. Tougher, more realistic westerns were just around the corner (Ford's "My Darling Clementine", Gregory Peck's "The Gunfighter" and James Stewart's collaborations with Anthony Mann, to name but a few examples) and Cooper was to find his last great role when he eschewed the overdone country hick in favour of the dignified seriousness of the marshal in the classic "High Noon".
I love the Coasters' hit song of the same name as this film, penned by the great Leiber and Stoller partnership from a few years later than this and before watching, had hoped it had been inspired by a rollickingly funny and richly entertaining movie.
I was wrong.