Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Fantastic!

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

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

a western. with the ambition to be more than one of ordinaries examples of genre. and this desire is far to be extravagant. because it propose a seductive story of lost, friendship, form of fatherhood and spirit of youth. and the great surprise remains Anthony Franciosa who has the best occasion to do a role in which the nuances are real important. Michael Sarrazin gives , more than a credible character, a lovely portrait of an age. it is a special story. about success and grow up, about love and seduction, about illusions and lost causes, about heroism and about ...women and the force who defines the words. short, more than a good western. because the classic story has deep roots. and an inspired director.

James Goldstone made several big-screen movies and none of them seemed to connect. He also made a number of made-for-television movies. Who knows why he decided to remake King Vidor's "Man without a Star" with Kirk Douglas as a guitar-strumming cowpoke. Incredibly, "A Man Called Gannon" is as good as the Vidor film. The only objectionable element is the vocals that add nothing to this atmospheric oater about a veteran ranch hand and a tenderfoot from Philadelphia. The supporting cast is as strong as the two leads, Anthony Anthony Franciosa and Michael Sarrazin (two actors that I have never cared for), and John Anderson, Gavin MacLeod, James Westerfield, Eddie Firestone, David Sheiner, and let's not forget the gals: Judi West as a love-starved ranch owner and Susan Oliver as a soiled dove saloon prostitute. This is a beautifully lensed sagebrusher that doesn't appear to rely on previous shot footage, which Universal Studios had a nasty habit of falling back on in a pinch. First and foremost, "A Man Called Gannon" is a horse opera about cattlemen, barbed wire, and morality. This isn't a snappy Spaghetti western with a catchy title tune, gunplay galore, and men wearing six-gun every conceivable way on their hips, legs, armpits, bellies, etc. This is a believable, low-key, oater that draws on the strongest element in any movie or novel—solid characterization.

This movie is like a lot of others made at the height of the Vietnam War - I swear Hollywood was chucking out really bad movies just to take people's minds off the war (check out Burt Lancaster in "The Swimmer" some time.) Number 1: bad songs. This is a trademark of movies made between '65 and '71. Number 2 (or 1b): use of the harpsichord. Again, a key instrument in American movies made between 65 and 71. Then, there's the anti-hero (or two of them here.) I guess by 1968 / 1969, all the good western stories had been done. (Until Josey Wales, Dances with Wolves, and Unforgiven, that is.)This movie's writer and director must have said to themselves, "let's take the worst of the 1960's and put those characters in the 1880's." Let's imagine the Woodstock generation faced with a range war.

A watered- down remake of 1955's "Man Without a Star." And this one lacks the 'star' power (Kirk Douglas) of the original. The routine stroy of mentor and young tender-foot seems just that-routine. Franciosa lacks the 'chutzpa' to bring this one off...watch the original instead.