Customer Reviews

Gunsmoke:One Man's Justice [VHS]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Gunsmoke films of Matt Dillon as a retired aged Marshal, produced by James Arness, have good, mature stories, and are by no means grade B westerns. A stage coach carrying Dillon's daughter and her husband, an affable salesman, and a mother with a 15 and a 9 year old son, is chased and robbed by a band of five outlaws, who wound Dillon's son-in-law and shoot the mother. We learn later that these bandits had robbed a train and taken $60,000, which raises the question, why bother with the small pickings of a stage coach robbery. Dillon owns a ranch nearby and the survivors are taken there, where the mother dies from her wounds. Her eldest son, although only 15, leaves at night to find the five killers and avenge his mother, leaving his 9 year old brother to grieve both the loss of his mother and his abandonment. Dillon and the salesman feel they must help the 15 year old who will certainly be killed without their help, and they pursue him. Predictably, the boy is almost killed, but saved by a strange Indian wearing glasses and later by Dillon and the salesman. During various adventures, the salesman shows himself to be quite good at handling a gun and fighting with his hands, but he refuses to tell Dillon about his background.

I'VE LOOKED FOR THIS MOVIE FOR A LONG TIME AND I AM SO PLEASED I HAVE ALL FIVE GUNSMOKE MOVIES NOW. I RECEIVED THIS MOVIE VERY FAST FROM THE TIME I ORDERED IT TO WHEN IT WAS DELIVERED TO MY DOOR AND THE QUALITY WAS EXCELLENT AND IN THE USUAL GUNSMOKE TRADITION OF GOOD QUALITY WESTERN ACTION. I WOULD ORDER FROM THIS SELLER AGAIN.

In the hundreds of episodes of Gunsmoke, Dodge City seemed to be in a
time capsule - unchanging. This contributed to its classic and classy
quality. The final made-for-TV Gunsmoke movie changed this with the
recurring theme that retiree Matt Dillon was approaching the threshold
of the 20th century. This is acceptable because, after all, Wyatt Earp
lived well into the 1920s. Signs of modernity included eyeglasses
on an reservation Indian, a victrola in a baudyhouse,
turmoil in Revolutionary Mexico, a bandit leader who perhaps escaped
famine in Europe and not an American civil war survivor. But most of all,
a lever-action shotgun that changed the odds in the final gunfight.
The signs of change added to this movie, like the
Bicycle Scene in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."

Matt Dillon is depicted as becoming a successful cattle rancher after starting
his retirement as a humble trapper in the first Gunsmoke movie
"Return To Dodge."
Nostalgic baby boomers who enjoy the legendary Gunsmoke series might
be inspired by how the legendary US marshal made a second career
in an age before pensions and social security.

It is extraordinary when fictional characters take on a life in our
collective imaginations. One can think of Don Quixote in Spain,
Sherlock Holmes in London, Evangeline in Louisiana, Huckleberry Finn
on the Mississippi River, Captain Nemo on the ocean floor.
Matt Dillon and his friends in Dodge City, Kansas, have achieved
the same iconic stature