Overrated and overhyped

Am I Missing Something?

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Audie Murphy and his aging, fugitive father Dean Jagger, live deep in the mountains, away from trouble. A chance encounter with lost lady lawyer Wanda Hendrix and a serious injury to Jagger sends Audie to town for the first time since he was a small boy, where he finds trouble with the law.Striking locations, good photography, and a well-plotted story combine to make a fairly entertaining movie. Action scenes are handled quite nicely as well, especially the climax, involving a stampeding of hundreds of horses, back and forth between the good guys and the bad! The only problem with the movie is that the ending (satisfying as it was) is just a little too convenient.An interesting cast includes Burl Ives as a singing mountain man and early performances from Tony Curtis and James Arness as brothers and part of an outlaw family hiding on Audie and Jagger's mountainMeanwhile, Audie plays pretty much the same type of character you always see (and love to see) him playing, that of a young, angry, brooding, misunderstood young man, real-life traits, shaped by his service in World War II, that Hollywood seized upon and interestingly enough, inspired writer David Morrell to create the character of Rambo, a piece of trivia that makes seeing Audie elude a posse in the mountains all the more interesting.

"Baby Face" director Alfred E. Green helmed this beautifully lensed but lame oater. This early Audie Murphy western isn't one to remember. Wanda Hendrix is spunky enough as the heroine, and Robert Rober makes an acceptably obnoxious villain. Murphy plays a callow young cowboy named Ring Hassard who dwells with his dad way back in the mountains. Murphy's father Jeff (Dean Jagger of "Bad Day at Black Rock") was wrongly accused of a homicide that he didn't commit years ago. Now, Jeff lives in a sort of self-imposed exile with his fast-drawing son. Nobody can find the Hassard camp tucked as it is far back in the mountains with only a stream threading through the towering rocks to follow. One day, an impetuous young girl, Riley (Wanda Hendrix), sets out to find a quaint character nick-named Lonesome (Burl Ives) who warbles songs on horseback while he strums his guitar. Riley loses her horse, and Ring finds her. He takes her back to his camp. Later, after she loses another horse, Riley realizes she maybe stuck with Ring and his father longer than she wants. She has been gone for about three days. The Hassards are short a horse so the elder Hassard decides to break a bronc for her to ride. The steed throws Jeff and drags the poor guy around the corral before Ring can rescue him. Once Ring has his father back to their camp and in a bed, Lonesome rides up and recommends that Ring fetch a doctor. Ring plans to pay for the doctor with his maverick hores, but Big Matt Rango (Robert Rober of "Port of New York") steals Ring's horses. Eventually, Ring takes Riley back to Sierra. Along the way, Riley is bitten by a rattlesnake. Since he doesn't have a sharp enough knife, Ring shoots Riley. Everybody is overjoyed when Ring arrives in town with Riley. Meantime, Ring and Lonesome try to recover the horses that Big Matt appropriated from them. Big Matt and his gunmen capture Ring and put him in jail. The punishment for rustling horses is hanging. Ring has nobody to represent him. Riley steps in to defend Ring. Incredibly, Lonesome serenades the town marshal's deputy and gets the keys to open Ring's jail. As it turns out, Jeff Hassard was actually innocent of the crime. "Sierra" is nothing special.

Skip it – While this ranks among Audie Murphy's best westerns, it's far from spectacular. The plot, however, is unique. It is the story of an innocent young man who was raised in the mountains by his outlaw father. When his father gets injured, he is forced to go for help, and in doing so enters society for the first time. The naïve young man gets in to trouble, and it doesn't help matters any when the townspeople find out his true identity. While the plot is original enough, nothing else really stands out about this film. It co-stars a very young Tony Curtis and a very old Burl Ives, who starts getting annoying after he sings his fourth song. There is not very much action, and there are twice as many songs as gunfights. 2 action rating

Even though Sierra was not written by Zane Grey, it has all the elements of a typical Grey story, like hidden places and horse stampedes. Most Audie Murphy films were made to measure for him but not this one and the fact is that he comes out quite well. The main character is Wanda Hendrix, who was married to Murphy for a certain time. She is Riley, a girl who gets lost in the mountains when trying to look for Lonesome (Burl Ives). Instead she finds hundreds of horses and Murphy. Murphy has been hiding with his father Jeff (Dean Jagger) who is a fugitive. Jeff gets hurt trying to tame a horse and when he thinks he might die, he tells his son to always remember that he is innocent. Hendrix overhears it and will do everything she can to help them. Burl Ives as the singing Lonesome adds a lot to the film with his music and personality, completely different from the serious and bitter men he used to play in many films. Sierra is a light, colorful, entertaining, sometimes naive western worth seeing.