Ensofter Overrated and overhyped

Pluskylang Great Film overall

ThrillMessage There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

bkoganbing Fred MacMurray was not fond of his westerns, his most famous quote was that "the horse and I were never as one". But he rode no horses in At Gunpoint. MacMurray plays the town storekeeper who takes up a weapon and together with Frank Ferguson shoots Jack Pickard head of a gang trying to rob John Qualen's bank. He gets the outlaw leader and saves the money. The town acclaims him and Ferguson, but Ferguson is ambushed by the same gang outside town, MacMurray becomes the town leper.Comparisons have been made with High Noon, but I think this resembles more 3:10 to Yuma and Johnny Concho. In those two westerns we had citizen heroes as opposed to cowboy heroes. There's no resemblance to John Wayne in MacMurray's role.Even his wife Dorothy Malone wants him to leave, but MacMurray wants to stay. His only friend is the town doctor Walter Brennan.This is a very good if somewhat unconventional western. Keep an eye on Skip Homeier as well. He's playing once again an evil punk.

Spikeopath The Dennis gang ride into the town of Plainview and set about robbing the bank. However, during their escape Alvin Dennis (John Pickard) is shot and killed by a one in a million lucky shot by mild mannered store keeper Jack Wright (Fred MacMurray). Further compounding the gang's misery is that Alvin was carrying the money and so the town have managed to reclaim what was briefly taken from them. Jack, in spite of his protestations, is hailed a hero by all and sundry, even picking up a substantial reward. But led by a hate filled Bob Dennis (Skip Homeier), the Dennis gang are plotting revenge and have Jack firmly in their sights. Jack is about to find out just who his friends are in the fickle town of Plainview.Yeah yeah yeah, At Gunpoint (AKA:Gunpoint!) is for sure a variation on the High Noon theme, and yes it proudly stands in its pulpit sermonising a moralistic viewpoint. Its central theme one that has been used a number of times in Westerns both prior and post this Allied Artists Pictures release. But so what? If a story, and the potent universal messages at its core, is worth telling, then tell it. As long as it's told well and not bogged down by poor technical aspects, then that surely is enough for the discerning genre fan? At Gunpoint is directed by Alfred L. Werker and is written by prolific Western story teller Daniel B. Ullman. It's a Technicolor/CinemaScope production with Ellsworth Fredericks on photography duties, and the wonderfully named Carmen Dragon provides a bracing score. Supporting MacMurray and Homeier are Dorothy Malone as Jack's increasingly fretful wife, Walter Brennan as a loyal Doctor friend who likes a tipple, while Whit Bissell is a welcome secondary character addition.So many good things to recommend here, it may be a simple fable, but it's lit up by high quality acting and thrives on the moody atmosphere constructed by Werker. MacMurray was always hit and miss, particularly in the Western genre, but when he got it right, or perhaps when he had an understanding director? He was real value for money. Such is the case here. His Jack Wright is an honest man reluctantly put up on a pedestal, thus he quickly becomes a scared man. Naturally fearful for his wife and child, he doesn't hide that he himself is no hero, and has no wish to become one. MacMurray perfectly plays it restrained, thus it is heartfelt and believable. Homeier was always best when playing a snarly villain and here he delivers just that, a villain hell bent on revenge, an avenging brother whose actions speak louder than words. Werker was an old pro, a jobber director, and here he was coming to the end of a career that would span 32 years. He offers up some nice tonal delights here. Witness the dusty storm that descends upon Plainview, it coincides with the town residents having a change of attitude. Then there's his framing of the Dennis gang as they come for revenge, it's impossible not to think of them as the four horsemen of the apocalypse. While the final shoot out, and the twist in the horse tail, is awash with tension and crowned by a remarkable bit of stunt work. This a fine film that belies its "B" movie roots. One that will hopefully find more fans as the years roll by. 8/10

Robert J. Maxwell Fred MacMurray is a peaceful shopkeeper who kills one of the Dennis gang with a lucky shot. The rest escape. MacMurray becomes a hero throughout the state of Texas. The remaining five members of the gang determine to kill him. The other town residents know it and begin to avoid MacMurray. They offer to stake him to a new store in far away Amarillo. Should MacMurray hide his tail between his legs, pack up his loving wife and adorable kid, and skip town? Are you kidding? This is a routine 1950s Western. There must have been hundreds of them ground out, intrigues and drama in a studio-built town with one dusty main street, flanked by a dozen building fronts made of wooden planks. Here, the core issues of Heartland America were on display -- bravery, cowardice, love, treachery, and the question of what you do with a neighbor in your tidy suburb who refuses to mow his lawn as often as everyone else. The 1960s were a transitional period, turbulent and full of excess and challenge. By the 1970s, the issues had changed to corruption and street crime and the milieu in which these dramas were played out was changed to the city streets.But this is from the 1950s. And was released five years after the wildly successful "High Noon" with Gary Cooper as the upholder of reticent righteousness.In "High Noon," a couple of gunmen are returning to town to kill Cooper because he "sent up" the viperous Frank Miller. In "At Gunpoint," the same number of gunmen are coming back to town to kill Cooper, I mean MacMurray, because he accidentally shot a gang member who was the brother of another.The rest of the story is familiar. The gang sneaks in at night and murders the town marshall. Everyone knows they will come back and take care of MacMurray too. As in "High Noon" the town gradually marginalizes the well-meaning shopkeeper and his family, but he refuses to leave town because a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. His wife, Dorothy Malone, plays Grace Kelly and disparages his attempts to maintain his self esteem but, unlike Kelly, she's quickly won over. We see the gang riding into town for the final show down. We see the scared MacMurray behind a couple of barrels on the street corner, taking a few shots at them that miss their marks by seven hundred yards. The gang trot on towards MacMurray, grim and determined.Now, this is not the kind of movie that has any tricks up its sleeve. That's the whole point -- it should be comforting in its predictability. For instance, one of the character we meet at the beginning is the harmless, smiling, younger brother of Malone. There's no particular reason for his being there. He's always in the background being pleasant, but this story concerns MacMurray and Malone -- not MacMurray and Malone and Malone's BROTHER. Discerning viewers, those with the aficion for old movies, will recognize immediately that this character is DEAD MEAT. And so he is.Well, for the gang to continue its trot up the powdery street, right on up to the helpless Fred MacMurray, whom they then shoot full of holes, is unacceptable. Not because it wouldn't happen in real life but because it would surprise and challenge the audience. The only alternatives are (1) MacMurray to have four MORE lucky shots left in his Colt, or (2) the townsmen relent and capture or kill the gang. There are no other possibilities that don't involve supernatural intervention. No power on earth could force me to reveal which alternative the movie chooses.Oh -- those viewers with the aficion for old movies will recognize a lot of faces in the supporting case: Walter Brennan, Whit Bissell, the miscreant Jack Lambert, Harry Shannon (cf., "Citizen Kane"), John Qualen, and Frank Ferguson.Social psychologists will note the illustration of one of the more surprising findings of cognitive balance theory. Take a person who holds attitude A and opposes attitude B. Tell him that you'll pay him to act AS IF he holds attitude B. After he argues for attitude B long enough, he'll lose his belief in A and genuinely switch to B. In "At Gunpoint," the townspeople are friendly to storekeeper MacMurray. After the first shooting, they begin to avoid him out of fear for themselves and their families. Pretty soon, after they've acted as if he had the plague, they come not to like MacMurray very much and want to get rid of him. They begin with attitude A, act AS IF they held attitude B, and finally FEEL attitude B. They don't even congratulate him when his reward check comes, and they don't say thanks when he buys them a ceremonial drink at the saloon. Have you non-psychologists grasped the point? Good. That will be ten cents.

rooster_davis I'm not a huge Fred MacMurray fan when it comes to Westerns, I guess, but he could do a credible enough job as he did in At Gunpoint. The basic storyline involves a store clerk who shoots one of an escaping band of robbers. Only by a lucky shot does the clerk actually hit and kill one of the robbers; the dead guy's brother who is also in the gang makes it his personal business to get revenge, especially when the newspapers glorify the action of the clerk in shooting down the bad guy.This movie has one of my all-time favorite Western character actors, Skip Homeier, who is the bad guy seeking revenge. (Homeier and MacMurray are also a protagonist / antagonist pair in another Western, "Day of the Bad Man", where MacMurray plays a judge.) In this movie, MacMurray's son is played by Tommy Rettig of the 'Jeff's Collie' (i.e. 'Lassie') TV show and he is rather annoying in the role. Maybe the director wasn't paying as much attention to him, as Rettig was really very good in 'River of No Return' with Robert Mitchum. (The lucky kid had Marilyn Monroe's hands all over him during that movie!) Walter Brennan, another great, is in this movie and as a testy old doctor, he has some pretty funny acidic observations to make. When his best friend and checkers-partner gets shot and killed, Brennan underplays the scene where he sees that his friend is dead - and he does so masterfully. He gives only the slightest view of his anguish but you can tell he's devastated. Brennan was a giant of the Westerns and he's great in this movie as always.I think the premise of a story is all important and this movie has a great one - take an ordinary guy, give him beginner's luck at accidentally beating the bad guy, then have the rest of the bad guys come back seeking revenge. Don't compare this movie to High Noon as one other person did, because it's really not the same theme. Frankly if I had a choice of which one to watch right now it would be this movie, At Gunpoint. (And I do like High Noon very much, but this is also a darned good film.) You won't waste your time by watching this one. If you like Westerns, this is one you will enjoy.