Recorded from TV

If you measure Raoul Walsh's 1953 western "Gun Fury" (in the German version "Mit der Waffe in der Hand"-With the Gun in the hand) exclusively by the great genre contributions of this director - for me these would be "Pursued" (1947), "Colorado Territory" (1949) and "Along the Great Divide" (1951) - you will probably be a little disappointed by this film. However, if you can enjoy a thrilling and well timed western with a good acting performance in front of a harmonious scenery - fortunately, there are still people liking that - then you should be satisfied with "Gun Fury".

The movie offers a typical standard western plot, which is given a bit of weight by various references to the psyches of former soldiers. While Warren, who has bought himself a large piece of land in California, simply wants to go about his private business in peace and is now forced to take up arms once again, Slayton - deprived of his possessions by the victorious Union's policy of burning the earth in the South - sees himself as a big loser of the war and therefore has the right to get what he thinks he is entitled to through crime. In Jennifer, who is also from the South, he believes he has found a woman who is worthy of his rank, and he justifies his actions before her by saying that the war has left three great armies in the South - that of the poor, that of the crippled and that of the thieves, and it is to the latter that he happens to belong. However, the reference to the war is not more than a decorative accessory, because the plot is clearly in the foreground here, and it can be spiced up by all kinds of secondary characters - like a sheriff who refuses to help Warren, an Indian who wants to avenge the death of his sister, and a jealous Mexican - so that "Gun Fury" never gets boring.

At that time the movie was shot in 3D, which also explains that some scenes are inserted - for example the attack of a rattlesnake - in which the action moves towards the viewer. Walsh must have been a bit like Beethoven, who was deaf and still composing after the onset of his illness: Because he had lost an eye during the shooting of a western in the late 1920s - according to legend, John Ford is said to have worn an eye patch from time to time, partly because he saw Walsh as one of his idols, but also to give unwelcome interviewees a sign that he thought the conversation was over by folding down this accessory - he himself could never really experience the 3D effects he created here.