After Confederate officer Blayde Hollister's (Gary Cooper) home and family are destroyed and massacred by the sociopathic Marlowe Brothers during the Civil War , he swears for vendetta , refusing to surrender and becoming a wanted man with a reward on his head , as posters captioning : Wanted alive or dead . In order to track down the three brothers into Texas, Hollister fakes his own death in a staged shootout with his friend Wild Bill Hickock (Reed Hadley) . He then befriends Martin Weatherby (Leif Ericson) , the newly appointed U. S. Marshal to Dallas, and both of them scheme a twisted caper by replacing personalities . Meanwhile , the eldest of the Marlowe brothers, Will (Raymond Massey) , masquerades as a law-abiding real estate dealer while feigning righteous indignation over the cruel acts of corruption and lawlessness against the honest citizens of Dallas carried out by his nasty brother Bryant (Steve Cochran) . When all of Texas was a powder keg...they lit the fuse! The fury of violence and vengeance echoes across the Texas Plains ¡.
A run-of-the-mill plot but plenty of diversions on the trail , as Coop pretending to be a dandified US marshall in frock coat and top hat , horse-back chases , impressive gunfight and furtive romance . The big star Gary Cooper sleepwalks though he is supposed to be the laconic outsider-type , this doesn't matter at all . It contains adequate production values , thrilling musical score by the classic composer Max Steiner and blazing , glimmering Technicolor camerawork by Ernest Haller , basically a B-Western though . Stars the great Gary Cooper giving an acceptable acting in his usual style , but he starred much better Westerns , such as : High Noon , The Virginian , Unconquered , The Westener , Along came Jones, Friendly Persuasion , Garden of Evil , Distant Drums , Vera Cruz , The Hanging Tree, They came to Cordura , among others. He's well accompanied by the beautiful Ruth Roman with whom two suitors have a triangular romance , developed between Cooper/Hollister and Weatherby/ Leif Ericson as an affable, but not very experienced lawman, who agrees to let Hollister assume his identity . And other notorious secondaries as Raymond Massey , Steve Cochran , Barbara Payton , Jerome Cowan , Reed Hadley , Monte Blue and Antonio Moreno .
The motion picture was regular but professionally directed by Stuart Heisler . Director Stuart Heisler began his film-industry career as a prop man in 1913, joining Mack Sennett at Keystone the following year. He worked as an editor for Samuel Goldwyn at United Artists from 1924-25 and again from 1929-34 and at Paramount from 1935-36. He graduated to second-unit director with John Ford's The Hurricane (1937). He started his directorial career at Paramount in 1940 and stayed there until 1942, turning out mostly "B"-grade films but was occasionally given an "A" picture. Heisler made various films with known actors and diverse genres , such as Gary Cooper (Along Came Jones ,Dallas) , Susan Hayward (Tulsa , Smash-up) , Linda Darnell (This is my love) , Jack Palance (Died a thousand times , a remake of High Sierra) and Tony Curtis (Beachhead) , among others . A cool cast , professional direction from Heisler with riveting climax and enhanced by energetic score make this a must , but only for Gary Cooper fans . Rating : 5.5/10 , worthwhile watching.
