Fumbled at the finish line (Spoilers)

There's a lot to like in this movie. An excellent job from director Budd Boetticher a few years before his legendary collaborations with Randolph Scott. Audie's excellent and the supporting cast's loaded with first-rate talent. Scenery and camerawork are terrific. The plot maintains great momentum and it's studded with top-notch action (the double bank job, a cleverly staged train robbery and a terrific railway yard shoot-out). Leading lady Beverly Tyler's no great shakes. But firecracker Yvette Duguay makes the best and most resourceful Girl Friday an outlaw gang ever had. Tyler gets second billing onscreen but I notice Universal deservedly gave it to Duguay on the posters. Right up until the final few minutes I was ready to rate this a start to finish winner. Then came the lame and utterly improbable wrap-up. It pretty much flew in the face of everything we'd seen before. I mean Audie had been double-crossed by the law more than once; he had zero reason to expect a fair trial. And by this time his involvement in a string of robberies and killings would probably have meant even a fair trial might still end in a necktie party. Yet he quietly surrenders and seems to expect some sort of perfunctory sentence that'll have him soon reunited with his homestead sweetheart. I've read that the script originally called for Audie's character to die but nervous studio execs figured this would be too much of a downer for fans to deal with. Had they stuck with the original plan or at least concocted some kind of melancholy but resonant ending like the ones Boetticher often supplied in his Randolph Scott outings, I think this picture would've had a really tiptop reputation. But - as I said - for most of its running time it really is a little gem of a western. And 80 very entertaining minutes out of 84 makes for a pretty good percentage.