This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Happily, this is not strictly a formula western despite the earmarks. Instead it's got some unexpected twists that might surprise the viewer. Plus, of course, Bill Elliott as Wild Bill Hickok, one of the few matinée heroes who could growl, and make you believe it. Then too, there's tubby Dub Taylor as fairly amusing comic relief, and the sculpted Luana Walters as eye candy. Also, I can't help noticing that Richard Fiske, as the wayward Larry, was one of the few Hollywood actors k.i.a. during WWII. The industry should have commemorated these guys in some fashion.Anyway, the screenplay contains a pretty good story, where Bill is trying to save Larry from the clutches of bad guy Carew. There may not be much hard riding, or fast shooting, or eye- catching scenery. But it maybe the only matinée where the knock-down drag-out fist fight is between two bad guys! All in all, however, the 60-minutes amounts to generally superior matinée fare.

Bill Elliott played Wild Bill Hickok in many westerns so much so that he was billed as Wild Bill Elliott in films like Across The Sierras. But anything that any of these films have to do with the real Hickok is purely coincidental. Across The Sierras is one of thousands of westerns that take a real historical character and write a fictional story around him.In the case of Across The Sierras it's more like they took a western classic and adapted into this film. Any western fiction fan or film fan will spot elements of The Virginian in the plot of this B western. Elliott as Hickok has a young friend in Richard Fiske whom he is pulling out of trouble and warns him he's flirting with death or prison should Fiske not mend his ways. After Fiske starts hanging out with an especially murderous outlaw in Dick Curtis, Elliott accidentally kills Fiske and goes through grievous remorse. At the urging of Luana Walters Elliott considers becoming a peaceable man for real and hanging up his guns. But when Curtis challenges Elliott there's only one answer for a cowboy hero.Across The Sierras has a few more adult themes in this than the normal B western market that Elliott was appealing to at this time. It holds up pretty well today.