Hour of the Gun

"Hour of the Gun" sings an elegant swan song to the Western genre and an American ideal in a period when the nation's lawmakers battled its "love-makers."

This 1967 film, directed by John Sturges, retells the mythic feud between the Old West's Earps and Clantons as "the way it happened," beginning with the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and spinning a tale of revenge and vigilante justice that culminates with a bloody showdown in Mexico.

James Garner plays Wyatt Earp, a man who must morally define himself in the largely lawless Arizona Territory. He is foiled by the irresistible Jason Robards as Doc Holliday, an alcoholic consumptive who is unconstrained by the typical notions of right and wrong. Together, they work to take down Ike Clanton (played to loathsome perfection by Robert Ryan), the leader of a clan of "cowboy rustlers" that intends to subvert the rule of law and claim the Wild West as their own.

In 1957, Sturges named the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral by making it the title of a movie that culminated in a long, heavily armed firefight. This film cemented the legend of the Old West as a period of open-range outlaws and a few solitary pillars of justice who tried to reign them in.

When he told the story a decade later, the country had changed. It had moved through the cold war and into Vietnam, and moral ambiguities changed the nation's narrative appetites. This time Sturges opted for more authenticity and deeper uncertainty in his Western. Garner's Wyatt Earp is no longer the clearly defined role model a traumatized nation needed in 1946 when John Ford solidified the frontier marshal's legend in "My Darling Clementine" (a famous movie based on a largely fictional biography).

Edward Anhalt's ("Beckett") screenplay based on Douglas D. Martin's novel "Tombstone Epitaph" begins at the O.K. Corral this time, a smaller scale event that was much less suspenseful. And the narrative concentrates not on romances (no woman has a speaking line in the whole film), but on the male bond between Earp and Holiday and the testosterone-fueled feud between Clanton and Earp.

The cinematography by Charles B. Lang Jr. also fights a battle between the traditional soundstage shooting and a new type of filmmaking that was coming to the fore, one that required less equipment and allowed for more location shooting. It also made color processing much easier. In other words, there was more realism, and this is reflected in some of the outdoor landscapes.

Significantly, this film features Jon Voight as the Clanton gunman Bill Brocius. Here he would solidify his position in the genre just two years before his portrayal of a "Midnight Cowboy" would blow the lid off of the nation's Western ideals and become the only X-rated film to win the Academy Award.

This limited release by Twilight Time comes with its characteristic liner notes, isolated music and effects track, and original theatrical trailer.

"Hour of the Gun"
Blu-ray
$19.95
www.twilighttimemovies.com/