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Sadly Over-hyped

Fantastic!

A Masterpiece!

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The cast is perfectly chosen, and Warners' Technicolor production values are top-notch. It's one of Gary Cooper's best westerns of the 1950s, and that's saying a lot, because he made several good ones during this particular decade. What works so well is the interplay between Cooper and Leif Erickson who play men on opposites sides of the law that switch places. The story isn't as contrived as it sounds, and there is some excellent humor in the situations the performers mine like gold, without overplaying. Ruth Roman was never photographed more beautifully than she is in this picture, and it's easy to see why two strong-willed men would be vying for her attention. Raymond Massey is on hand as the villain, and this time he enacts wicked schemes with an equally villainous younger brother (Steve Cochran). Cochran's role is written with less comedy than the others, but even he manages to bring out the more humorous aspects of his character's situation without being too gimmicky. There are several brilliant sequences, but perhaps the best one involves Cooper, Cochran and a black cat on a nighttime street that leads to a killing.

There is something feline - almost feminine - in the way Mr G.Cooper walks to his first - reel showdown with Wild Bill Hickock(a piece of theatre put on in order to get the law off his back) that bodes well for those who like slightly anarchic Westerns. When Mr Cooper is killed everybody in the cinema knows exactly what has gone on but it seems to fool those whom it was intended to fool,in direct contradiction to Barnum's proposition. In "Dallas" it seems that not everybody knows they are appearing in a slightly camp send - up of the big Technicolor horse operas that were Hollywood's early riposte to the television age. Miss R.Roman seems to take her role seriously,that's for certain. Mr L. Ericson plays his part as a dime store Liberace. This is the sort of film Mr A.Dwan would have delighted in. The dialogue is brilliantly anachronistic,confirming that a few tongues were in cheeks at the production office. Entertaining and amusing,"Dallas" would have been well worth my one and nine in 1950.

Long before J.R. Ewing and some football cheerleaders made this Texas city popular, there was this colorful Warner Brothers western starring one of the greatest action heroes of Hollywood's golden age. Cooper plays a man wanted for arson who disguises himself as a marshal to unleash the real culprit. He convinces the actual marshal (Steve Cochran) to let him take over his identity and in the process, wins the love of Cochran's Mexican sweetheart (Ruth Roman). In going after the bad guys, he comes up against Dallas's most powerful citizen (Raymond Massey in a masterful performance) and taunts the bad guys in an explosive climax.If the idea of Ruth Roman playing a Mexican doesn't make you laugh (it seems that any dark haired beauty could be cast in Hispanic parts in this era) how about platinum blonde cult actress Barbara Payton as the wife of one of the bad guys and a group of actors who are supposed to play Texans but sound nothing like them? Two years before his Oscar Winning role in "High Noon", Cooper played a variation of the same role, and in studying the two films, you really can see the difference as to what makes a film tense ("High Noon's" clock is as much of a character as the human beings in the film, while "Dallas" has little or no tension at all) and what makes it simply routine. If it wasn't for the color photography or the presence of its cast (Cooper, Massey and Reed Hadley as Wild Bill Hickock), this could have drifted into the hundreds of "B" westerns of the time, entertaining in their own right but basically forgettable.

Gary Cooper and a marshal change identities, since they both agree Cooper would be more efficient facing the outlaws. What is remarkable in this film are the costumes, both the marshal´s and Steve Cochran´s who is the bad guy. Cochran wears his guns backwards, probably to be able to crossdraw. The film starts quite excitingly with a showdown with Wild Bill Hickok. Ruth Roman, looking very pretty is the marshal´s fiancee. There is plenty of action, never a dull moment, but you have to concentrate, because the story is a bit complicated. Good entertainment.