Roaring Guns

Roaring Guns (1944)

** (out of 4)

This two-reeler was part of Warner's "Santa Fe Trail" series and features Robert Shayne playing a cowboy who comes to the mountains to help a mining company with their ways of using high water pressure to cut through the mountains. What he doesn't realize is that this quick method is causing mud flows, which is killing the land of the farmers and they want revenge. ROARING GUNS isn't a very good movie but it does feature some political overtones that weren't necessarily common during these days. I think it's fair to say that the writer wanted to get a message across that destroying land wasn't in anyone's favor but the film is just so boring that it's really hard to care about anything going on. Director Jean Negulesco seems more worried about getting the film done on time and under budget that he never really seems to be worried about getting an interesting story across. The entire film is about as bland as you can get as there's not a bit of drama, suspense or any type of energy that's going to keep the viewer interested. The one bar fights comes off boring. The love story is boring. The villains are boring as are the heroes. There's not one bit of energy to be found in this thing, which is a real shame because there's a decent story here that something better could have been done with. Fans of Shayne will want to check this out but others should just stay clear and watch one of the hundreds of other Westerns out from this period.