Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Very best movie i ever watch

Pretty Good

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Oh, where to beign? FIrstly: I'm born/raised in Wichita KS so I know the old girl pretty well. Even still visit "Old Cowtown" on the banks of the "Little Ar-Kansas River"... which is amazingly framed by a nonexistant mountain range! Note that phonetic pronunciation because it's just one of the many inaccuracies this old Technicolor chestnut promulgates. Typically, a character in the film calls it the "Ar-kan-saw" River. But those are the least of the offenses as this movie steadfastly portrays that thug-with-a-badge Wyatt Earp as a reticent, conquering hero. Truth is he was nothing of the kind, let alone Marshall of my hometown! Earp was just a patrolman in the seedy worehouse district of Delano, which was just on the other side of the river from "respectable" Wichita. Today Delano is filled with botiques, but in 1888 it was filthy and crawling with rats an stray dogs.. in fact, young Wyatt honed his pistol skills by shooting mongrels for the palty bounty the city offered... money he would later gamble away playing Faro at a local table. He was also himself once arrested for disorderly conduct. Earp was a piece of work, all right! In constrast, his buddy Bat Masterson was a decent lawman and one of the few who would live to tell about his wild days on the Kansas prairies - he retired writing a sports column for a NY newspaper. But Wyatt Earp still had an infamous career ahead, including the disgrace that was the OK Corral and his subsequent vigilantism as he and his merrry band roamed the countryside to murder those who were already exonerated in court of law. Earp finished his days as a respected advisor to Hollywood silent films where he perpetuated the myth of white-hatted good guys. Appropriartely -in real life- Wyatt Earp always wore a black one. But the mythical legacy he left behind was still a strong one as this turgid potboiler demonstrates.

Wyatt Earp (1848 – 1929)is probably the most famous lawmaker from the old west. He appears in this 1955 film.Earp is most famous for the "Gunfight at the OK Corral", made famous in novels and films. Earp was first featured in the 1923 "Wild Bill Hickok" where he was played by Bert Lindley. Earp himself worked behind the scenes with his buddy William Hart (who played Hickok). He appeared again in "Frontier Marshall" (1934) based on the novel of the same name. George O'Brien played Earp. John Ford produced the first notable film about Earp, called "My Darling Clementine" (1946) which many people consider a great film. Henry Fonda played Earp and Victor Mature played a wonderful coughing Doc Holiday. The "Wyatt Earp" TV series (1955 – 61) had Hugh O'Brian as Earp. The series gave birth to the 1957 film "Gunfight at OK Corral" with Burt Lancaster as Earp. John Sturges directed this film and re-visited the era with "Hour of the Gun" (1967) with James Garner (Earp), Jason Robards (Doc) and Robert Ryan (Ike Clanton).In the 1990s, "Tombstone" (1993) and "Wyatt Earp" (1994) gave us more intense portraits. In Tombstone, we have Kurt Russell as Earp and in "Wyatt Earp" Kevin Costner.For my tastes, the best Earp was Hugh O'Brien on the TV series, followed by Kurt Russell ("Tombstone") whom I think was the more realistic Earp. Joel McCrea does a really poor job as Earp. McCrea was a great Western actor and he was terrific in "Ride the High Country". But he adds nothing to the Earp legend in this one.

The way you can tell a "B" Western -- and this IS a B Western -- is not always the actors. This movie has a pretty good cast. Joel McCrea (who should have never gone into Westerns in my view) is a really good actor...and he is good here. The supporting cast is pretty decent, too -- Vera Miles, Lloyd Bridges (in his bad-guy era), Wallace Ford, Edgar Buchanan, and Peter Graves. And they do their jobs well.And, it's not always the story the makes a movie a B movie...although the story here is -- as a couple of other reviewers pointed out -- a little too simplistic.Sometimes it's just the lack of care that is taken in the production. For example the first day the new railroad comes into town it's on tracks rather overgrown with weeds. Or the high mountains outside Wichita...high mountains in Kansas??? In other words, throw a Western together. It's the 1950s and Westerns are hot. It'll get good box office...and it did. Today this little Western would go nowhere at the box office. I doubt it would even make into theatres. But, that's not to say it's unwatchable. It's slightly better than the average mid-1950s Western.

jacques tourneur, of Cat People fame, might seem an unlikely candidate to helm an above average B+ western. But that was the case in 1955 with Wichita, about the early days of Wyatt Earp. Some liberties with the facts are taken, including the notion that Earp had never worn a badge before he arrived in the Texas cowtown. In fact, Earp was the marshal of Ellsworth, Kansas in 1875 and was wooed away by the larger Wichita - even as Dodge City would then talk him into moving there. Many incidents in this film actually took place in Ellsworth, as the two towns are 'collapsed' into one another. That aside, the film is fine - whether individual things we see happened in one town or the other, the point is that the savvy screenplay conveys a strong understanding of the politics in such a city, and with no simple good guys in white hats or badguys in black ones, we realize that Earp had more problem with greedy townspeople than with outlaws. Bat Masterson (whom he actually knew from buffalo hunting days) becomes a deputy though he really wants to be a newspaperman, and while that had not yet occurred to him, Bat would, after leaving the rest, become a famous sportwriter in New York. One terrific sequence involves the attempt of a corrupt businessman to hire a pair of gunmen to kill Wyatt, though they turn out to be two of his brothers, and this incident really did take place. Joel McCrea makes a sturdy Earp (he later played Bat in gunfight at dodge city), and Keith Larson is fine as the young Bat. Great title song, by the way, by Tex Ritter. As to the upper level of B westerns in the fifties, they really don't get much better than this.