Save your money for something good and enjoyable

not horrible nor great

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

There is always something interesting and just a bit different in this Director's Movies. This one is no exception. It is replete with thought provoking ideas like cowardice, bigotry, loyalty, and other values only found in the better Westerns.This is an action filled Film with guns blazing, galloping Horses, Wagon Trains, bushwhackers, Mexican impersonators, fist-fights and all that is expected in this type of thing. But the difference here is the intelligence. The injection in a popular genre some things that rose above the material.Budd Boetticher, Anthony Mann, and sometimes John Ford and Howard Hawks always gave more than the raw material. This is a modest effort from one of the Greats with an OK cast and a Production that looks so much bigger than it was. That was Boetticher, he was always so much bigger and better than what he was allowed.

This western is the opposite of WAYNE's epic :it demonstrates that the personal is personal -as well as the political;Alamo is a background,since most of the action takes place after the defeat.Glenn Ford portrays a character that strongly recalls that of Richard Widmark in Delmer Daves ' "the last wagon" ;a "deserter" in the former ,an outlaw in the later,they are both rejected by the whole community of a town,then a convoy ;their fiercest enemy is a marshal (caravane) and a lieutenant(Alamo).Both "so called " cowards,pariahs save many lives and thus regain their lost honor;the most moving moment is when Hugh O'Brian asks Ford if he can shake hands with him.A pleasant western ,with a credible figure of a man who has lost all that was his Raison d'être.

By chance, June clouds threatening, I sat down and watched this entertaining western on a Saturday afternoon. An earlier commentator ended his praise for this film by noting that it is "an excellent western for a Saturday afternoon." And it was. The ethical dilemma of leaving a field of battle (in this case the Alamo)to try and save the lives of loved ones is a powerful theme. The repercussions to John Stroud, Ford's weary but stalwart character, are scorn, accusations of cowardice and worse. The best part of the film are the sweeping shots of the Texas plains. The movie is well-composed, capturing the majestic plains and hills with a strength of purpose that demands an emotional response. One of the early films of Jeanne Cooper, who is a favorite of mine.

During the war of independence of Texas, a group of five men of the city of Oxbow chooses, for a raffle, who would leave the fort Alamo to save the families of all them of the Mexican troops. Stroud is the chosen, but is considered a coward by the other men of the fort, that don't know about the real reason of his escape.However, when arriving to his home, his family and the one of all his companions had been killed by American renegades, that struggled beside of the Mexicans. Now, is the hour of the his revenge! But how to face the hostility of all the Texans that considered him a coward for fleeing of the Alamo?Happily, his heroic behavior due to the adversities, as when leading a caravan of Texans before an attack of the renegades, will show to his compatriots him real value!Good film, with good interpretations. An excellent western for a Saturday afternoon.