Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Day of the Evil Gun (1968) is an enjoyable pulp western with two over the hill actors in the lead. Glenn Ford became a star in the forties and fifties with Film Noirs like Gilda (1946) and The Big Heat (1953), westerns such as 3:10 to Yuma (1957) and The Fastest Gun Alive (1956) and with the classic social drama The Blackboard Jungle (1955). Arthur Kennedy had built up an image of sympathetic bad guy in westerns like Rancho Notorious (1952) and The Man From Laramie (1955) and in drama's like The Lusty Men (1952) and Some Came Running (1958).The plot of Day of the Evil Gun is a variation on The Searchers. Glenn Ford is looking for his kidnapped wife and his two children. He gets unwanted help from the lover of his wife, played by Arthur Kennedy. On their search they meet some colorful characters, all played by some of the best standard supporting actors Hollywood had to offer in that period: Dean Jagger, John Anderson, Royal Dano, Nico Minardos and a very young Harry Dean Stanton. The search and the finding of his wife and children become less interesting as the film progresses. The relationship between the two leads and the characters they encounter are far more compelling.The story was written by two veteran TV writers: Charles Marquis Warren and Eric Bercovici. The screenplay may be formulaic, but they provided an efficient story-line with lively characters and enough surprises to keep it entertaining all the way.Glenn Ford would continue to act until the early '90 in films and TV. After Day of the Evil Gun he still managed to participate in one classic, the very first big budget comic book epic: Superman (1978). He was excellent and is still the most memorable film interpretation of Jonathan Kent, Superman's adopted earth father. Despite the fact that he had only about two scenes. Arthur Kennedy would also keep on working until his death in 1990, but nothing memorable.Day of the Evil Gun may not belong in the section of the great classic westerns, but fans should check it out because it contains some good set pieces, especially the vulture scene. Day of the Evil Gun was released in the period when the Italian westerns were dominating the box office in Europe. These spaghetti-westerns were light years ahead when it came to violence, nihilism and memorable set pieces. But Hollywood had not caught up yet. Soon however the American classic westerns and action films would be replaced by spaghetti westerns imitations.

An offbeat ,almost dusky western ,with two veterans of the genre ,Arthur Kennedy and Glenn Ford ,both at their best and giving their characters substance :who is really the"hero"?Even when the movie is over ,you will not know..The subject is well known and was often treated in the past notably by John Ford : rescuing women captured by the Indians ,but the script is bizarre,including scenes which you would not expect ,which makes the two men's adventures an odyssey in miniature :the prisoners ,tied under the blistering sun ,and the birds of prey which gather à la Hitchcock's "the birds";the town where cholera is rampant;the pacifist man who does not understand why one can murder his fellow man.Not very plausible (particularly the final stampede ) ,most likely a fable with an ambiguous "moral".

I've just finished reading the glowing remarks of others on this film, and I am incredulous. Did we see the same movie? I'm a huge fan of Glenn Ford and Arthur Kennedy. But they both must have been buying new property or something when this outrageous script came by. They could only have made it for the money.We often appreciate drama by practicing the age-old "willing suspension of disbelief." This movie, however, challenges this with a series of totally unrelated and laughingly unlikely scenarios, almost saying, "Well, okay, but would you believe this?" The Mexican bandito finds our two heroes strung up in a tree. He goes to all the trouble of staking them out in the heat of the desert so the vultures will devour them alive. (The stakes, which the bandito just happened to have, are securely driven into sand.) Oops. No. He returns to save the one who says he knows where some money is. By the way, the bandito hasn't even broken a sweat from all this physical exertion.What? This clever bandito is easily distracted by searching for the missing money in the butt of the rifle he took from the two, so Ford can outflank him. El bandito thinks he is safe because the one bullet in Ford's pistol is two chambers away from the hammer.What? Our heroes learn from one of the citizens dying from cholera that the Apache camp where the wife and daughters are being held is two and a half days west. Apaches are not resident farmers, like the Hopi, they're desert roamers. But they'll still be there when our stars arrive.What? The renegade soldiers have only ammunition to bargain with the Apaches for their lives, but during the Indian raid, no one is assigned to protect the remaining wagon of bullets.What? After crossing a desert, Kennedy dives into the first water source to noisily slake his thirst. The nearby Apache sentry does not hear or see them.What? They manage to sneak up on the sentry and take him out. That's two clumsy white guys trying to be stealthy around a moccasined Indian.What? Ford and Kennedy rappel down a cliff side in full view of the Indian camp without drawing attention.What? They succeed in sneaking up behind the woman and her daughters who have been tied to three poles in the center of the camp. One must assume the three have been staked there, relieving themselves in their clothes, for the four or five days its taken our heroes to get there.What? They cut the bindings, shielding themselves from the Indians' view by peeking around the poles. The Indians were sort of like folks who couldn't see the resemblance between Clark Kent and Superman.What? No one is protecting the Apaches' horses, when Ford drives them away and Kennedy piles the ladies onto the ammo wagon and escapes. Their escape will take more than two and a half days. They make it without the Indians chasing down a few horses and attacking from the rear.What? In the final confrontation, Kennedy is shot from behind by a store keeper who admits to knowing nothing about guns. The single shot is a good 30 yards and not just wounds Kennedy but kills him instantly.What? To all those viewers who bought this sequence of thinly weaved scenes that come unraveled like cheap sweaters, I ask, were you smoking something? Or what?

Not bad little western starring Glenn Ford as Lorne Warfield, a gunfighter who has had his belly-full of killing and just wishes to carve out a new life with his wife and two daughters. When he finds they have been kidnapped by Apaches, Warfield will have quite a few obstacles in his path before he can rescue them. Arthur Kennedy has the best role of the film as Owen Forbes, a man in love with Warfield's wife and resents the man for walking out on his family. Forbes is slowly growing accustomed to killing as many will die by his gun along the way. Warfield is always looking over his shoulder in regards to Forbes but will have to form a partnership with him in order to somehow survive an accompaniment of ordeals along the way such as Army deserters wishing to make a trade with those Apaches who have kidnapped Warfield's family. They'll have to contend with Mexicans, also.The film is excellently photographed by cinematographer W Wallace Kelley, especially many numerous long shots which really open wide the hot desert landscape Warfield must ride(..and walk)along the way. But Kelley's marvelous camera-work during the Apache attack on the small town filled with betrayed Army deserters led by John Anderson's Jefferson Addis, is wonderful to behold. Probably my favorite sequence is when Warfield and Forbes have been tied up to be meat for the buzzards as we watch and wonder in horror how they'll ever escape this ordeal. When you have Glenn Ford and Arthur Kennedy as your leads, a film would be hard to dislike. This one does have a rather routine plot, but as I mention above the cast and photography is first-rate.