Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Taraparain Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

nkpdblue Excellent directing and production with realism and acting skill resulted in this stellar performance

mgmax A sort of modest High Noon imitation which shows how even a fairly routine western back then could have some interesting things on its mind. Fred MacMurray is the new marshal of a town, and the witness to the killing of the previous one during a bank robbery, which means he's front and center in terms of responsibility for the impending hanging of the kid who did it, a local boy gone bad (Robert Vaughan). His High Noon moment comes when the whole town starts to get a liberal conscience about the kid's lack of proper upbringing, and starts to want to let him go, while only MacMurray stands up for hardcore law and order values. If the politics of the film are as anachronistic as the tidiness of the supposed western town (which feels like a soporific 50s sitcom suburb as much as it does anything on the prairie), the clash of 50s juvenile delinquent-movie progressive attitudes and a Dirty Harry/Reaganesque law and order type is strikingly ahead of its time. Or maybe, like High Noon, it's making a blacklist/McCarthyism parallel, except here it's justifying following the law (ie, naming names) to a T even when it makes you unpopular with those who would cut the bad guys some slack. Anyway, Nathan Juran is no poetic western stylist, and Fred MacMurray is stalwart but not as intensely compelling as, say, Randolph Scott, but it's an interesting little movie nonetheless.

bkoganbing On a peaceful day in a small western town in Nebraska in 1878, a bank robbery occurs and Marshal Emile Meyer is killed pursuing the gang. But citizen Fred MacMurray, a former marshal, kills one of the gang and wounds the one who he saw shoot Meyer.It was Robert Vaughn a young kid who was a former resident of the town who left some years earlier. It's now obvious what he took up doing after he left. MacMurray's daughter Joan Blackman is kind of fond of Vaughn even though she's been keeping company with the young town doctor, James Drury.Good Day For Hanging has some good intentions and other reviewers have faulted for having the cast speak in modern idiom. That's not the film's problems, it's trying to graft a 20th century urban plot on a 19th century rural western situation.Try as I may, I can't believe that these frontier townspeople are so squeamish about hanging this punk. Even as Vaughn claims, he did not do the actual shooting of Meyer, he's as guilty of the murder of this peace officer whether he pulled the trigger or not. The attitude expressed in such films as True Grit and Hang 'Em High is far more typical of the times than Good Day For A Hanging.Of course in all this MacMurray is called to put on badge again and it's his testimony that actually convicts Vaughn. Still public opinion gradually turns against him for what I can see, no discernible reason. The controversy puts a strain on his relationship with Blackman as well as with fiancé Margaret Hayes.Best performances in the supporting cast are from Edmon Ryan who plays more of a modern defense lawyer in this western. Still he does do a fine job. And I particularly liked Kathryn Card as Meyer's widow. Her scenes count and you will remember her performance over everyone else's in Good Day For A Hanging.Fred MacMurray was not overly fond of westerns. In his salad days with Paramount he only did one, The Texas Rangers and during the fifties he did a few of them before becoming a Disney star. His famous quote was that he never felt at one with the horse'. His riding scenes were probably doubled, but in the scenes in town MacMurray acquits himself admirably.But this one in the last analysis was an eastern/western.

malvernp "A Good Day for a Hanging" (GDH) shows us once again that there is a finite number of original plots that can be turned into a film story.The similarities of GDH to the classic "High Noon" are substantial. Gary Cooper's name is Marshall Will Kane in "High Noon" while Emile Meyer's name in GDH is Marshall Hiram Cain. Coincidence? I think not! The Fred MacMurray character (Ben Cutler) is about to be married (as was the Cooper character); upon the death of Marshall Cain in GDH, Cutler reluctantly becomes the new Marshall; the MacMurray/Cooper characters find out just how lonely and isolated it is to be an honorable law enforcer in a small Western town; both prospective wives want to break off the impending marriage because they perceive a conflict between the lawman's doing his duty and the peace and stability of married life; both present the unwanted intrusion of outlaws into the life of the quiet town; both involve the eventual rejection of the lawman and his efforts to uphold the law by the town-folks who put him into his position in the first place; both have the requisite climactic shootout with the outlaws which our hero survives; both end up in reconciliation between the MacMurray/Cooper characters and the town-folks as well as the prospective wives; and both validate the need for law and order to maintain civilization in the Old West.MacMurray seems to have fashioned his lawman character as though he IS Cooper---only in color this time and with a less well-known cast of supporting players. And instead of the ticking down time feature of "High Noon", we are given the slow construction of a gallows for the jailed killer as GDH's plot hook----a structure that we know will never be used-----except in the telegraphed ironic ending."High Noon" is good enough in its own right to deserve a respectable knock off-----which GDH is. If imitation is the greatest form of flattery, the creators of "High Noon" should have been mighty pleased with GDH.But there are differences between the two films. MacMurray was never in the same acting league as Cooper, and Margaret Hayes could never be mistaken for Grace Kelly. Ian MacDonald (Frank Miller) is a far more menacing villain in "High Noon" than the rather young Robert Vaughn is in GDH.For those of you who enjoy the Western genre and are fans of "High Noon", GDH is well worth seeing just to become familiar with an obscure copycat version of a true classic.