Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

Sharkflei Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Seraherrera The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Wizard-8 Apparently Metro Goldwyn Mayer, while giving the movie a theatrical release overseas, sent this western directly to television in North America. It's pretty easy to see why MGM wasn't totally confident that the movie would attract domestic audiences. The script is the main problem. The story is made up of many elements and plot turns you will have seen in countless westerns before; I bet even audiences in 1967 found the story clichéd. Not only that, the script insults the audience by taking more than half of the movie to set everything up; there's no reason why it should have taken so long for this creaky story to define everything. Also, that first half of the movie is pretty dull, with almost no action or anything else that might be considered lively. The second half of the movie is a bit more energetic, but it's too little and too late. Why the present owners of the movie thought it was worth a DVD release through their on demand video line, I cannot say.

judithh-1 Return of the Gunfighter" was not Robert Taylor's last film. He did a couple of B productions in Europe, working into 1968. In October of 1968 he had a lung removed and did not work again. Nonetheless, "Gunfighter" is a suitable farewell. Taylor plays a reformed gunfighter, recently released from prison after serving 5 years for a bogus murder conviction. The character, Ben Wyatt, seeks only to live in peace but events make this impossible. When a friend and his wife are murdered, Wyatt must see that justice prevails.The meat of the story is the relationship between Wyatt and young gunslinger Lee Sutton, played by Chad Everett. A secondary motif is Wyatt's love for his "niece," Anisa, played by Ana Martin. It isn't a love triangle at all but a passing of the flame to the younger generation. Everett, a happy-go-lucky young man, learns to be a responsible adult by confronting the villain, Clay Sutton (Lyle Bettger), his older brother. Under Wyatt's influence, he faces evil and wins the young girl's love.Everett is charming and handsome as Lee Sutton. His self-centered playfulness is gradually replaced by a sense of morality and accountability. Ana Martin's acceptance of him as a suitor comes only as he matures. Martin had a better role than women usually do in westerns and handles it satisfactorily although not memorably. The supporting cast is uniformly professional and effective.The picture, however, belongs to Taylor. He is still handsome and his lined face conveys emotion with quiet authority. As others have said, no one rode a horse the way he did--his straight yet graceful posture, his easy control, his oneness with the animal. The pretty boy of the thirties has become a superb actor without ever being showy or "going Hollywood." It is disturbing, however, to watch his labored breathing, knowing what caused it. The last scene, where he walks away from the camera, alone in the street, is very moving.

doug-balch I like this movie, but I'm a Robert Taylor fan and this is a good solid role for him. If you don't like Robert Taylor, this is pretty cookie cutter.Here's what I liked:Nice job building the mystique about pistolero Ben Wyatt.Robert Taylor does his usual excellent work replaying the Jimmy Ringo character from the original "Gunfighter". I won't criticize this for "ripping off" the 1950 film, since they pay tribute to the original film in their title. I liked the main henchman Sundance, played by John David Chandler. He had a real Steve Buscemi kind of look to him. He was also one of the four weird Hammond brothers in "Ride the High Country". He was also the bounty hunter at the end of "The Outlaw Josey Wales" whom Josey tells, "Dyin' ain't much of a livin' boy", before shooting him down.Nice use of Mexico and Mexicans.Here's what I didn't like:Weak heavy.No comic reliefNothing new added to clichéd plot.Riddled with plot holes and implausibilities, not worth detailing.

bkoganbing Probably the best role Robert Taylor had in the last five years of his life was in this made for television western, Return of the Gunfighter. Though no new dramatic trails are broken here, Taylor is just right for the part of a character very much like Gregory Peck's Jim Ringo in The Gunfighter.Unlike Peck who's returned to a wife and child he abandoned for the wild ways of his youth, Taylor has no family. We meet him after he cashes out of a poker game after catching one of the players cheating. When the cheat objects and draws on him, Taylor shoots him down and just mutters "why won't they leave me alone." He's just tired of it all, but it turns out his skill is needed by an old friend Rodolfo Hoyos who's being forced off his land. Taylor is summoned but arrives too late.He does pick up a traveling companion of sorts in young gun Chad Everett who's got three mean brothers on his trail. Let's say that the two of them help each other in their situations, though for Everett it does cause a crisis of conscience as you'll see if you watch the film.And watch it you should. Robert Taylor liked doing westerns, you can see it in his performances in them. He made fun of the 'iron jockstrap' parts like Ivanhoe, but he loved going west. Personally I think he should have concentrated on them in the sixties or looked for a big budget television series like his ex-wife Barbara Stanwyck had.Taylor's chief nemesis is Lyle Bettger the man who killed his friend and others. Bettger once again brings one of his sadistic psychos to the screen and effectively. This one does have a healthy respect for Taylor's reputation and skill as he tries to tell young punk John David Chandler, when Chandler seems to buffalo Taylor in a saloon. The fact that Chandler had several friends with him, kind of stacked the deck. It's a scene very similar to one that John Wayne and George Kennedy did in The Sons of Katie Elder.This was the second of two films that Chad Everett did with Robert Taylor and he always spoke of Taylor's kindness to him as a young player and his generosity in that he never worried about Everett stealing any scenes. Taylor was back at MGM for this final film with them, the studio where he held the longest contract in screen history. Had Return of the Gunfighter been made 10 year earlier, it surely would have gotten a theatrical release.