An absolute waste of money

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Randolph Scott plays a man who worked, briefly, for Quantrell and his evil raiders during the Civil War. However, Quantrell's actions (he was more a terrorist and thief than a real soldier) soon disenchanted him and he left to serve in the regular Southern army. Soon the war ends and Scott is hated for his war record and people don't want to give him a chance. After nearly being killed by a mob on a riverboat, he decides to head west and lands in the middle of a terrible town run by cut-throats. Eventually, Scott gets rid of some of the baddies and makes it a nicer place to live.I am a huge fan of the westerns of Randolph Scott and have seen several dozen of them. In general, his later ones made from about 1956-1962 are the best and this film comes from his more inconsistent period. While this is not among the very worst of this period, it is not a particularly good film for a variety of reasons.The biggest problem is that Scott's character never made much sense and it seemed as if the writers really had no idea where the story was going. It just seemed that his character wasn't sure if he was good or evil or anything in the middle. You just had no idea what his plan, if any, was and by the time the film was over, you just felt a bit disappointed in the whole thing.In addition, there were some other serious problems. While this is a relatively common problem in Scott films, the stunt doubles were just awful. In particular, the guy who doubled for Ernest Borgnine looked nothing like him and it was VERY obvious that is wasn't him in the fight scenes---very, very obvious--almost comically obvious! The other problem is that originally this was a 3-D movie and the 3-D direction was about as subtle as a 2x4 upside your head. Way too many times the characters tossed things towards the camera or pretended to be punching the camera. A little of this might have worked great, but as much as they did made it look like a "cheese-fest"!! The Three Stooges' 3-D short was more subtle than this!! My advice is unless you are the most rabid and die-hard fan, skip this one or save it for after you've seen his later work. Otherwise, you'll get the impression that his films are pretty ordinary--which is not really the case.

During the American Civil War, the Quantrill's raiders use the spy Jeff Travis (Randolph Scott) to plunder the city of Lawrence, in Kansas, and Travis leaves Quantrill when he sees the massacre of the town. After the war, Travis believes that he is a wanted man and he heads to Prescott, in Arizona, to start a new life. However, the powerful Jules Mourret (George Macready), who apparently is a businessman but actually is the leader of a gang of thieves, knows his past and forges documents with a fake identity to give a job in the local Conroy Stage and Freighter Line. Mourret is unsuccessful trying to steal the money and gold transported by the company but is frequently lured by Jason Conroy (Pierre Watkin); he intends to use Travis to get inside information about the transportation of gold. When one of Mourret's men kills the driver of the wagon, Travis schemes a plan to get rid of the gang. "The Stranger Wore a Gun" is only an average Western and is disappointing considering the names of Randolph Scott, Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine in the cast. The story is weird and the motives of the ambiguous character performed by Randolph Scott are absolutely confused, but in the end this movie entertains. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "O Pistoleiro" ("The Gunman")

Having been shot in 3-D, expect a lot of guns to be pointed at you and sometimes shot, fire coming at the camera, and even rock formations in Lone Pine to appear to have shelves. Outside of this minor distraction, the story is a good one concerning the aftermath of Quantrill's Raiders involving one of his spies, Jeff Travis (Randy Scott), who is determined to run away from his past and begin a new life. Following a fracas on a riverboat, he ends up in Prescott, Arizona, just as the capital of the territory is being moved to Phoenix because of the lack of law and order in the town. Somewhat of a mentor to him as well as lover is the soiled dove Josie Sullivan, played knowingly by Claire Trevor. He rides into Prescott loaded for bear, hence the title "The Stranger Wore a Gun." That he can't shake his past even in an out of the way western hamlet becomes obvious when both Josie and Jules Mourret (George Macready), another ghost from yesterday, turn up there. It's not quite clear where the stranger is heading until a close pal is murdered by Jules' henchmen. To muddy the water a damsel in distress appears, pretty Shelby Conroy (Joan Weldon), who seems shy and innocent. The stranger begins falling in love with her to the displeasure of Josie. Newcomer Jules is holding a Mexican gang at bay led by the colorful Degas (Alfonso Bedoya). The stranger begins playing one gang against the other to almost be gunned down in the crossfire.Two of Jules' henchmen would go on to win Academy Awards a few years later, Lee Marvin as Dan Kurth and Ernest Borgnine as Bull Slager. Borgnine wears one of the loudest cowboy outfits ever, including a green shirt. He looks like a dude from the east. This doesn't stop him from being the sadistic bully he usually played in those days. Marvin too is his usual twisted demented character fans loved to hate. To see these two in action is worth the price of admission.Postscript: Look for Tap Canutt, son of famous stunt man Yakima Canutt, in a bit part. He was also one of the stunt men for the film.

With Randolph Scott in his best outfit riding his best horse (Starlight) and looking and acting his dusty old best, and with Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine at their early villainous peaks, this could have been something. With Andre de Toth directing, it really should have been something. But it's not something. It's not anything, except a mess. Horrendous dialogue, terrible editing (the big gunfight in the mountains is unintelligible until the principals gather to rehash what just happened), and some really bad acting (not so much from Scott, Borgnine, or Marvin, but pretty much everybody else. Alfonso Bedoya is a joy to watch, as always, not because of his acting, which is abominable, but because it's so much fun trying to figure out what it is he's doing with his mouth to make him sound that way. George Macready, who belongs in things like "Gilda" rather than oaters like this, kept getting shoved into Randolph Scott Westerns (four of them). He's incredibly out of place in all of them. And Claire Trevor, so wonderful in "Dead End" and "Key Largo," is wasted here and one's heart goes out to the Oscar-winning actress for having to do such pot-boiling dreck as this a scant five years after winning that Oscar. The attempts at 3-D effects are pretty laughable in their earnestness, and for an action movie, an awful lot of the actual action occurs just off-screen -- saving money on stuntmen and stagecoaches, I suppose, but diluting the feel of the down-and-dirty Western this clearly wants to be taken for. I'll watch anything Randolph Scott did in the Fifties and Sixties, but this one was an absolute chore. I'd sure like to know where to get a coat like that, though.