It just didn't fit. This movie got four stars on TCM, so I watched it.
It had some good writing and acting. But with the title, you would figure that they would have more than TWO action scenes, which could be debated if they even WERE action scenes.
Putting Peck in a western was anything but a novelty, and he was good in all of them.
"Duel in the Sun"
"Yellow Sky"
"The Gunfighter"
"The Bravados"
"The Big Country"
"Billy Two Hats"
"Shoot Out"
"Mackenna's Gold"
"The Stalking Moon"
"How the West Was Won"
Generational bias on my part.
To this Gen X er, Peck will always be associated with Atticus. A cowboy just seems out of place.
I'm a Gen Xer too, but I think Gregory Peck is great in westerns. Not everyone in the Wild West was a grizzled, amoral gunslinger like Clint Eastwood or a big burly lawman or rancher like John Wayne.
Another good Peck Western not on that list is "Only the Valiant", a B&W cavalry and Indians western from the early 50s.
That's the price Mr. Peck has to pay when in 9th grade a young redsfan was introduced to Mr. Peck and his Atticus character by showing the To Kill a Mockingbird film in school.
The book/film was required reading and viewing for most people in my state.
Now if I was shown a couple of his westerns in 6th grade I might feel different 🙂.
I had to read and watch that in 9th grade, too. Fortunately, for me, when I saw Atticus it was "Hey! That's the sheriff from MacKenna's Gold!" and the gambler from "How the West Was Won!", first of which I had seen on TV in the mid-70s and second in a theatrical re-release when I was really small.
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