MOVIE · 1957

Forty Guns

ActionAdventureDramaRomanceWestern80 min

Jessica Drummond rules an Arizona county from horseback, backed by a forty-man posse and the kind of power that reaches from the ranch to the town. Barbara Stanwyck’s Jessica is challenged when U.S. Marshal Griff Bonell arrives with his brothers and a warrant for one of her hired guns; Barry Sullivan gives Griff a steady, restrained counterweight to her authority. As the rancher and the lawman circle each other, their standoff is complicated by hotheaded brothers on both sides and another female gunfighter entering the picture. The film unfolds in black-and-white CinemaScope, with wide desert frames and hard, fast dialogue.