Forty Guns (1957)
This was sadly bit of a disappointment, because it started really well and had plenty of really cool elements, but the story lost me. I love how it is shot. The widescreen noir black and white looks fantastic. When the brothers first come to down with the first showdown with the bandits is a top tier well made scene. There is a great deal of humor to the dialogue and the introduction of Jessica being handed a letter at a ridiculous big dinner table with 40 guys is hilarious.
I wouldn’t say the movie falls apart after that, but it lost me along the way. The story unfolds at a brisk pace with plenty of killings and assassinations attempts with gunmen out for revenge all the time. There is some good scenes in that, but there are too many characters with a small storyline to keep track of and none of them is given enough time to develop or become interesting. I especially had a problem with the various love interests, which is a common thing for older westerns in particular, that I simply don’t believe in any sort of chemistry between the male and female leads. Here it was Jessica that sadly quickly devolved from being an unusual female gang leader to a silly damsel in love with the stoic gunslinger for no apparent reason.
Rating: 2.5