Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971)

Well, a B for effort. It tries hard. Everyone except Garner overplays it in this rip off of "Yojimbo" or "For a Fistful of Dollars." (Take your pick.) Garner is a con man who rides into the town of Purgatory. Two sides are in battle over the contents of a gold mine and they mistake him for the manager of a hired gunslinger. He bilks both sides, meanwhile romancing Suzanne Pleshette.Garner is smooth and transparently phony. He smirks a good deal. But every other character seems to dash about, shout at one another, and shoot guns wildly. The mistaken assumption is that frenzy -- even pointless frenzy -- is in itself funny. The film itself disproves the theorem.For instance, if anyone can find anything amusing about a bar room brawl that breaks out for no reason at all, please let me know so I can send you a personal check for sixteen cents that will bounce. We've all seen a thousand such brawls, with men being pushed through windows, hit over the back with balsam wood chairs, looking cross-eyed when punched, and the bartender is frantically trying to save the mirror. They've been used to far greater comic effect in "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" and even the unsuccessful "Donovan's Reef." And for dramatic effect nothing equals the fist fight in "Shane." This one could have been written, directed, and edited by a Magic 8 Ball.It was directed by Burt Kennedy, who developed some subtle and witty dialog in the movies he wrote for Randolph Scott in the 1950s. "Ma'am, if you was my woman I'd of come for you, even if I'd of died in the doin' of it." It's almost folk poetry. But, as a director, there's not much he can do with this script, whose funniest dialog runs along the lines of, "Madam, unhinge your jaw and DEPART!"

This attempt to duplicate the success of "Support Your Local Sheriff!" fails badly. (Perhaps it was the lack of an exclamation point in the title.)Right from the stat, the story falls flat on its face and never gets up. We're never given a reason why we should be concerned about the characters. (We don't have to like them, just be interested in them.)From the moment he appears, James Garner's character is a cipher -- who cares what happens to him, good or bad? This is a remarkable "achievement", as James Garner is one of the most-engaging actors who ever lived.The other reviews complaining that the characters or dull or uninvolving pretty much hit the nail on the head. It's a mildly irritating bore from beginning to end.

A con artist arrives in a mining town controlled by two competing companies. Both companies think he is a famous gunfighter and try to hire him to drive the other out of town.Another reviewer pointed out that even after all this time (42 years as I write this) the film is still funny and fresh. I have to agree with them completely. I never saw the film before now and I thought much of it was clever, original and just witty enough to be a solid film.I have not seen much of James Garner's work, and now I think perhaps I should. Between this and "Maverick", he seems to be the unsung hero of the west. (Or at least under-sung, with John Wayne and Clint Eastwood holding the "sung" category down by themselves.)

This movie, while funny in many places, pales in comparison to the earlier Support Your Local Sheriff. The first movie, with much of the same cast, is a solid 10 but I can only give this one a 7 at best. All of the actors who were in both movies did a better job in the first one and Joan Hackett was surprisingly better than Suzanne Pleshette.They just aired them back to back and the superiority of Sheriff was glaringly apparent. Sheriff flows along smoothly with great dialog but this one seems to stutter and try too hard. The premise of the first movie is also better and the opening scene sets the tone for the hilarity that follows. Again this one just doesn't do that as well. I always liked Garner and he was brilliant in both movies but maybe they should have quit while they were ahead and never made this one.