Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

COWBOY G-MEN presages THE WILD, WILD WEST by over a decade. This little-known 1952-53 series shares with its cult favorite successor the inventive concept of two government men in the Old West investigating those crimes too big for mere marshals and sheriffs. Their authority supersedes that of state and local law enforcement and they carry credentials requiring their cooperation.With all that power and authority, and dangerous cases to crack involving mass murderers and merciless outlaw gangs, Pat Gallagher and Stoney Crockett could be deadly serious and cynical men, but as played with aplomb by Russell Hayden and Jackie Coogan there's a lighthearted jocularity that makes the show entertaining and bubbly. Hayden and Coogan enjoy an easy rapport and make a great team, not unlike Jim West and Artemus Gordon.Speaking of Artemus, master of disguise, Phil Arnold in a regularly recurring role as Zerbo gives a foretaste of Arte's forte. In "Spring the Trap," for example, Zerbo is an actor with a one-man show who employs his make-up skills to Pat Gallagher, disguising him as a criminal so he can infiltrate a band of thieves.Phil Arnold's primary purpose, however, was comic relief, which abounds when he's paired with Jackie Coogan. In the aforementioned episode "Spring the Trap," Zerbo asks Stoney to join him on stage and the two old friends perform a full song-and-dance routine, warbling "The Bald-Headed Boys from Paducah" while taking pratfalls and pulling toupees from their shiny pates.It's great to see Russell Hayden in a lead role, and he proves himself capable of doing the heavy lifting. Nonetheless he'll always be Hoppy's sidekick Lucky Jenkins to me. Jackie Coogan wears well the mantle of sidekick here, playing an integral role in most stories and giving and receiving his share of lumps in the brawls that highlight many episodes. It is unfortunate that for many fans of vintage television Coogan is known only as Uncle Fester on THE ADDAMS' FAMILY, a fun role to be sure, but a limited one. His talents were much better displayed on COWBOY G-MEN, where he was able to perform drama and action, as well as comedy.If COWBOY G-MEN was a kids' show, it was one refreshingly free from meddling mothers' groups and hand-wringing psychologists. Characters are routinely gunned down or die horrible deaths, like being sucked down into quicksand. In "The Sidewinder," the criminal holds a grandfather and his beautiful granddaughter hostage, steals their gold, and tries to force a kiss from the granddaughter that approaches sexual assault. Certainly not the stuff of later, squeaky clean kids' shows, such as the last couple seasons of SUPERMAN.One shortcoming of the series is continuity. When and for how long exactly were Pat and Stoney riding about solving crimes and busting up outlaw gangs? Three episodes provide a span of at least 12 years, occurring in the years 1878 ("The Sidewinder"), 1888 ("Spring the Trap"), and early 1890s ("The Ghost Town Mystery," which includes a reference to the Sherman Act of 1890). Continuity snafus are not a capital crime, however, as even the iconic Western series THE VIRGINIAN was plagued with a fuzzy chronology (e.g., the first season episode "It Tolls for Thee" is set in 1884 and another, "Riff-Raff," is set in 1898!).It's a shame COWBOY G-MEN lasted a mere one season and left us only 39 episodes, too few for syndication, which is why I suspect so few Western fans are familiar with the series. Hayden went on to produce the 1957-59 series 26 MEN that is at a glance similar in featuring an elite corps of men dedicated to tackling threats too big for local law enforcement. Closer to 26 MEN would be MACKENZIE'S RAIDERS (1958-59), which I've seen described as an Old West foreshadowing of MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE (not quite, from the few episodes I've seen). COWBOY G-MEN suffers too from a lack of respect, with poor quality prints spread out across numerous releases by Mill Creek and other bargain bin distributors. I hold out hope that Timeless/Shout Factory will corral all 39 episodes and release a complete series set.Okay, so Pat and Stoney don't have the glamour and glitz that Jim and Arte had (a tricked-out train car, a memorable arch-nemesis like Dr. Loveless, or those superspy gadgets and gizmos), but in watching the two Cowboy G-Men gallop across the Southwest I can't help but be convinced they blazed the trail that West and Gordon trod into television history a decade later on THE WILD, WILD WEST.

A previous reviewer pointed out that G-Men was not a term used in the old West during the time period in which the program was set. No kidding. They did have U.S. Marshals hired by the government to rule territories that had not officially been set up. In the Golden Age of B westerns, there was a series called the "Rough Riders" which co-starred veteran Westerns stars Buck Jones, Tim McCoy and Raymond Hatton. However the term "Rough Riders" did not gain popularity until Teddy Roosevelt organized a group of cowboys and wranglers to charge up San Juan Hill. No doubt the word G-Men because kids of the Fifties were familiar with it. There were at least three radio programs dealing with the FBI at that time. Gang Busters, F.B.I. in Peace and War and This is Your F.B.I, Russell Hayden was already known to kids as one of Hoppy's sidekicks in the movies and Jackie Coogan was known to adults who recall his childhood movies. In fact, anytime Coogan's name is mentioned, I first think of Cowboy G-Men and Stoney Crockett before I think of Uncle Festus.

Someone was not too up on his American history in the creation of this show which had G-Men, the slang term for FBI agents out there in boots and chaps in the old west. The Federal Bureau Of Investigation was not founded until the Theodore Roosevelt Administration under Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte. And yes, he was one of THE Bonapartes. That would be the 20th Century.In fact the Department of Justice was created in the Grant Administration, an achievement not often credited to that beleaguered president. But it had no investigative arm operating out of Washington. Such investigations they did do were under the supervision of whatever US Attorneys the jurisdiction fell.So basically what I'm saying is that Cowboy G-Men had no basis in fact whatsoever. But as a little kid of five when this show premiered, these things didn't prevent me from enjoying the adventures of Russell Hayden and Jackie Coogan every week. Phil Arnold was in about 60% of the shows and his scenes with Jackie Coogan were definite comic relief.Not the best quality westerns, but enjoyable nonetheless.