Watch Hour of the Gun For Free

Let's be realistic.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Probably the most famous lawmaker from the old west is Wyatt Earp (1848 – 1929), possibly because he survived the craziness and actually went to work for Hollywood in his old age during the silent era, hob- knobbing with directors John Ford and Raoul Walsh, and actors William Hart, Tom Mix, and Harry Carey. Some say he even had an influence on a young John Wayne.Earp is most famous for the "Gunfight at the OK Corral", made famous in novels and films. Earp was first featured in the 1923 "Wild Bill Hickok" where he was played by Bert Lindley. Earp himself worked behind the scenes with his buddy William Hart (who played Hickok). He appeared again in "Frontier Marshall" (1934) based on the novel of the same name. George O'Brien played Earp. John Ford produced the first notable film about Earp, called "My Darling Clementine" (1946) which many people consider a great film. Henry Fonda played Earp and Victor Mature played a wonderful coughing Doc Holiday. Old Man Clanton was played savagely by Walter Brennan and John Ireland played Billy Clanton. Ward Bond and Tim Holt played Earp's brothers.The "Wyatt Earp" TV series (1955 – 61) had Hugh O'Brian as Earp and Douglas Fowley as Doc. Ned Buntline was played by Lloyd Corrigan and Old Man Clanton by Trevor Bardette. The series gave birth to the 1957 film "Gunfight at OK Corral" with Burt Lancaster (Earp), Kirk Douglas (Doc), Lyle Bettger (Ike Clanton), Dennis Hopper as a cowardly Billy Clanton, and John Ireland as Johnny Ringo. John Sturges directed this film and re-visited the era with "Hour of the Gun" (1967) with James Garner (Earp), Jason Robards (Doc) and Robert Ryan (Ike Clanton).In more recent years, "Tombstone" (1993) and "Wyatt Earp" (1994) gave us more intense portraits. In Tombstone, we have Kurt Russell (Earp), Val Kilmer (doc) and Stephen Lang (Ike Clanton) with Sam Elliott and Bill Paxton as the Earp brothers, Powers Boothe as an irredeemable Curly Bill Brocius and Michael Biehn as the deadly Johnny Ringo. "Wyatt Earp" had Kevin Costner (Earp), Dennis Quaid (Doc), and Jeff Fahey (Ike Clanton) along with a host of women who played the Earp extended family. We even had Gene Hackman in a cameo as the father.So how does this film stack up with the others. For my tastes, the best Earp was Hugh O'Brien on the TV series, followed by Kurt Russell ("Tombstone") whom I think was the more realistic Earp. Val Kilmer is my favorite Doc Holiday, though I am partial to TV's Douglas Fawley. For villains, no one was as despicable as Walter Brennan ("My Darling Clementine") although Powers Boothe ("Tombstone") came close and I was also fond of Michael Biehn ("Tombstone"). The best coward was surely Dennis Hopper ("Gunfight at OK Corrall").In my mind, "Hour of the Gun" is the weakest of the telling of the Earp tale.

Skip it – There have been many westerns made about Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and the gunfight at the OK Corral. According to the opening credits, this is the "true" story. What sets this story apart, other than the fact that Wyatt Earp is played by James Garner instead of Kurt Russel or Burt Lancaster, is that the movie starts at the OK Corral and recounts the events that follow. Usually the OK Corral is at the end. The action in this one is about average for a western, and Robert Ryan is about average as the "bad guy." Nothing really stands out about this movie. It's not bad, but it ranks behind other Wyatt Earp movies such as "Tombstone," "The Gunfight at the OK Corral," and "My Darling Clementine." So I'd only watch it if you were interested in the events beyond the OK Corral.

Hour of the Gun is directed by John Sturges and adapted to screenplay by Edward Anhalt from Douglas D. Martin's novel Tombstone's Epitaph. It stars James Garner, Jason Robards and Robert Ryan. Music is by Jerry Goldsmith and cinematography is by Lucien Ballard. Story begins with the shootout at the O.K. Corral and tells of the aftermath involving the major players.Although John Sturges' Gunfight at the O.K. Corall ten years previously proved to be popular, the director was never happy with the finished project, due in no small part to the fact that Hal B. Wallis controlled the script. Here Sturges takes control and crafts what in essence is a sequel to the 57 movie. Leaning more towards a character study with a dark edge, Hour of the Gun is refreshing in giving the Wyatt Earp/Doc Holliday characters a different story than the one we normally see on the screen; one that actually attempts historical accuracy where possible.Viewing it now it's easy to see why the film was received coldly back on release. The Western movie was just about creaking along as a viable cinematic genre as it was, but with Sturges and Anhalt portraying one of America's folklore heroes in moral decline, it's unsurprising that it found itself out of sync with the times. However, time has been very kind to it, where over decades the re-evaluation of many a psychological Western has seen it viewed as one of the more bolder and cynical tinted oaters from the 60s.With a fine script from Anhalt to work from, who also features as a player in the film as Holliday's whiskey smuggling carer, the cast work well. Ryan files in for villain duties as Ike Clanton and Garner as Earp and Robards as Holliday make for a suitably sombre pairing. There's also some quality in the support ranks where Albert Salmi, John Voight, Jorge Russeck and Karl Swenson leave good impressions. With Goldsmith tonally aware for the scoring and master photographer Ballard utilising the Panavision on offer for the Durango locations, it's an all round well put together production. Some fat could have done with being trimmed off it to get it 10 minutes shorter; for the story starts to feel over long entering the last quarter. But Hour of the Gun is not only a better than your average 60s Western, it's also one of the better Wyatt Earp movies available to those interested in the subject. 7.5/10

Sturges originally attempted to cast Hour Of The Gun - a loose sequel to his Gunfight at the OK Corral - with some of the same actors with whom he worked back in 1957, ensuring a natural degree of continuity. (Sergio Leone planned the same creative economy two years later by initially casting the famous station opening of Once Upon A Time In The West with a reunited Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach and Clint Eastwood.) Various factors made Sturges' scheme impossible, but leading parts were still secured by some fine actors: James Garner (as Wyatt Earp), Jason Robards (Doc Holliday) and Robert Ryan (Ike Clanton) as well as, way down the cast list, a young Jon Voight. Music was commissioned from Jerry Goldsmith and cinematography was from Lucien Ballard, who contributed so much to several Sam Peckinpah films.In the event the reception afforded the results was lukewarm. Hour Of The Gun was seen as too cynical and with a bitter tone that, though reflecting changing times, was less welcome in a conservative genre still a couple of years away from the controversies of The Wild Bunch. Audiences who had enjoyed the less complex moralities of such Sturges movies as Bad Day At Black Rock, The Magnificent Seven, or The Law And Jake Wade, and so on, were perturbed by the portrait of a lawman who, in the event as his best friend says could either be seen "as a hero with a badge - or a cold blooded killer." Garner's usually genial screen persona was subsumed in a portrayal of Earp as someone who eventually loses sight of his own guiding principals in an obsessive pursuit of personal vengeance. Adding to the uncertainties was the sight of a Doc Holiday whose own moral trajectory went unexpectedly the other way to such an extent it brings the two pals to blows."This picture is based on fact. This is the way it happened," announces Sturges' movie at its start, a complete antithesis to John Ford's often quoted dictum from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) to 'print the legend'. Scriptwriter Edward Anhalt (who has an apt cameo in the picture as Holiday's resigned doctor in the sanatorium) reduced the level of historical inaccuracy noticed in Gunfight At The O.K. Corral even if, as events moved further along from the OK fight and its effects, matters still tended to drift (the elder Clanton, for instance, did not end up shot in Mexico). And ironically, most weaknesses in Hour Of The Gun can be put down to its avowed intentions to stick closer to the twists and turns of history. Whereas Gunfight At The O.K. Corral has a largely simple, arching structure leading to an inevitable climax, its successor is more episodic. A good deal of running time is devoted to the various face-offs of its survivors - in courtrooms, in the townships or on the range, as animosities were carried further. In Sturges' original crack at the legend, Earp defends society and the law and can be more objective in the process, even though it also concerns family; in the new film, in the light of the aftermath, he takes it far more personally. Legalities become ever more precarious until the changed, if still honourable, lawman confesses, "I don't care about the rules anymore. I'm not that much of a hypocrite." The classicism perceived in the earlier film, the moral clarity characteristic of cinema of the times (and demanded by the producer), is replaced by a more baroque narrative, which paints a much darker psychology.Hour Of The Gun begins with one of the finest of all western openings. The combination of a fine Goldsmith score (its main theme a combination of a reluctant growl and world-weary call to arms), the director's characteristically assured staging of action within the widescreen frame, as well as the tension brought by imminent events, are striking. The long, largely wordless moments as the Earps walk shoulder to shoulder, resolutely facing destiny, derive their power almost entirely from Sturges' powerful mise-en-scène - a sequence which, incidentally, may have inspired Peckinpah when staging the climax of The Wild Bunch. After such a start any narrative would be hard pushed to sustain such tension, and the episodic nature of what follows, as mentioned above, does not always work to the director's advantage. But Garner, Robards and Ryan (who also appeared in Peckinpah's film) are excellent enough to keep matters on track, whilst the turning of various events gives Sturges plenty of chances to stage smaller gunplay between individuals. There is no distracting love interest and the sentimentality brought by the Frankie Laine ballad which echoes through Gunfight At The O.K. Corral - a hangover, perhaps of the singing cowboy tradition - has been discarded.Today the particular mood of Hour Of The Gun seems better attuned to our cynical times than Gunfight At The O.K. Corral, which glows with a nostalgia not thought of when it was made: the lasting comfort of clean heroes and clean lines of plot. Garner's Earp is not afraid to get his hands dirty in matters of personal revenge even if it means, ultimately, he feels unable to accept promotion to adjutant general, chief lawman of the territory. By setting his later film in the times after a notorious gunfight, Sturges pre-empted such later directors as Clint Eastwood and Kevin Costner, who have also been concerned with the consequences of violence in such films as Unforgiven and Open Range. To the extent that Hour Of The Gun is all about the lasting turmoil and personal costs brought by the fatal encounter by a dusty horse lot on 25th October 1881, it has much to say that is relevant today.