Absolutely the worst movie.

A Brilliant Conflict

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

WICHITA 1955 This Allied Artists film is a Cinemascope production shot in vibrant Technicolor. This western stars Joel McCrea, Vera Miles, Lloyd Bridges, Edgar Buchanan, Carl Benton Reid, Mae Clarke, Robert Wilkie, Jack Elam, Wallace Ford, Peter Graves and Walter Sande. Joel McCrea plays Wyatt Earp here.McCrea is travelling to Wichita Kansas to look into setting up a business. He has a small fortune saved up from his buffalo hunting days. He meets up with a group of cattlemen running a herd of beef to the rail-head at Wichita. The boss, Walter Sande, offers Earp some grub and a place to bed down that night.Two of the cowhands, Lloyd Bridges and Rayford Barnes lift McCrea's cash during the night. This shall we say causes more than a little ill will. McCrea takes his cash back and thumps Bridges for his troubles. This of course sets up for some violence later on.McCrea hits town and soon makes friends with local newsman, Wallace Ford, and his reporter, Bat Masterson, played by Keith Larson. McCrea impresses the local town big shots when he foils a robbery at the town bank. They offer him the job as Town Marshal. McCrea turns the offer down.McCrea however takes up the badge after a small boy is shot by a bunch of drunken cowboys. He collars the cowpokes and fires the whole mess of them into jail. There is now a series of events that has McCrea at odds with the cowboys, some of the town elders and one of the saloon owners, Edgar Buchanan.The biggest bone of contention is the new law of McCrea's of no guns to be carried in town. McCrea also finds time during all this to step out with pretty Vera Miles. Miles is the daughter of one of the town's leading citizens, Walter Coy. Coy is not happy about this and tries to stop Miles from seeing McCrea.Saloon owner Buchanan hires a couple of out of town guns to eliminate McCrea. Too bad for Buchanan, that the two, Peter Graves and John Smith, are actually two more of the Earp brothers. McCrea gives Buchanan an hour to leave town.Needless to say Buchanan does not take the ejection well. He returns that night with Jack Elam and Rayford Barnes. The attempted killing misses McCrea and gets Miss Miles mother, Mae Clarke, instead.McCrea and his brothers are soon in hot pursuit. Elam and Barnes are quickly ran to ground and dispatched. Buchanan however escapes. He meets up with the cow-poke pals of Elam and Barnes. He soon has the group whipped up for a spot of revenge on McCrea and company. We all know how this is going to end.This is a much better than expected western with fine work from the entire cast and crew. The film was helmed by Jacques Tourneur. Tourneur is most well known as the director of the noir classic, OUT OF THE PAST. The man worked in several genres and put out more than a few excellent films. These include, CAT PEOPLE, THE LEOPARD MAN, BERLIN EXPRESS, CANYON PASSAGE, STARS IN MY CROWN, NIGHT OF THE DEMON and NIGHTFALL.The look of the film is top flight with Harold Lipstein handling the cinematography duties. His work include the westerns, WALK THE PROUD LAND, CHIEF CRAZY HORSE, DRUMS ACROSS THE RIVER, NO NAME ON THE BULLET, AMBUSH , HELL IS FOR HEROES and NO QUESTIONS ASKED.Look close and you will see former early western star, Franklyn Farnum as well as McCrea's son, Jody, in small bits.

Wichita is directed by Jacques Tourneur and written by Daniel B. Ullman. It stars Joel McCrea, Vera Miles, Wallace Ford, Edgar Buchannan, Lloyd Bridges and Keith Larsen. It's filmed in Cinemascope/Technicolor with cinematography by Harold Lipstein and music by Hans J. Salter.Wichita is an origin story, that of one Wyatt Earp (McCrea), the story is set before he gets to Dodge City, where apparently some famous gunfight occurred. From a narrative stand point it's a town tamer story, Earp arrives in a newly thriving Wichita, at this point he's a hunter of buffalo only. But as the cowboys converge on the town, and things turn very dark, Earp - a bastion of good and just righteousness - finds it impossible to continue in turning down the town superior's offers of becoming the town Marshal.It's one of those Western movies that made Western movie fans become Western movie fans. A film you would have watched as a youngster and just bought totally into the good guy against the baddies central core. Of course as youngsters we wouldn't have cared a jot about thematics such as capitalism ruling over common sense, or metaphysical leanings ticking away, all while a genius director is composing shots and frames of great distinction. Hell! Even the intelligence and maturity in the writing would have escaped us, the dark passages merely incidents of no great concern...Wichita is damn fine film making. OK! It isn't wall to wall action. Sure there is a good round of knuckles, a bit of trench warfare and the standard shoot-outs, but these are just conduits to smart and compelling human drama, richly performed by McCrea (brilliantly cast) and company. Tourneur, Ullman and Lipstein make sure there is no waste on the page or via location framing, the costuming authentic and pleasing, and of course the story itself, the set up of the iconic man himself, is as compelling as it is splendidly entertaining.It be a traditional Western for the traditional Western fan. Nice! 8/10

here we got another pretty old guy playing a middle-aged romeo and the legendary hero. this mediocre western provided tailor made shirts and pants, cool gun belts, crazy low-life mindless childish cowboys. when they reached Wichita, the horses they rode in, lined up along the street in front of the taverns and bars just like what we did today, parking our cars one by one if we were lucky enough to find a space where the meter was running, 4 hoofs replaced by 4 wheels, the only difference is those horses didn't have to pay state and city taxes to get the license plates, pay the annual vehicle registration fee, horses riding over two years didn't need to pay another fee for smog check. guns were like adult toys in moronic childish hands to shoot aimlessly. nowadays, the guns fired from the thugs and gang-bangers to the sky in los Angeles or other big cities, the stray bullets also killed a lot of people.all the western movies always come with loud music to glorified the scenes, when train arrived, the main character rode into town, before and after the duels, or rode into wildness, into the sunset afterward, the sound track would blast loud music to accommodate those scenes, some of the movies even never stopped playing music. this kinda format really annoyed me to the extreme and i have to turn down the volume all the time when i watched these kinda movies and i am tired of it.

The film was well developed in Wichita where appeared Wyatt Earp (Joel McCrea) as one of the many lawman hired to keep the peace . Wyatt Earp was a gunman and sometime peace officer whose legendary reputation as a paragon of law and order was largely manufactured by himself and his biographer Stuart Lake . Undoubtedly he was also a man of great courage and gunfighting skill . After working as a freighter and buffalo hunter Earp served as a policeman in Wichita (during 1875-76 years) and then as an assistant town marshal of Dodge city . Wichita was a major cattle town that started life as a trading post for the Indians who had a village nearby and later a white settlement developed around . The town was incorporated as a third class city in 1871, and the following year , when the railroad reached the location , it becomes a booming railhead of the cattle drives from Texas up the Chisholm trail . Like other cattle towns (Abilene) the rowdy , free-spending cowboys attracted saloon keepers , gambling houses , brothels , dance houses and all types of frontier riff-raff , the city became notorious for its lawlessness and vice , serving the needs of Texas cowboys . Wichita was the leading cattle shipping center , with 200.000 cattle and 2.000 cowboys flooding into the area at the height of the station . At the movie the cowboys (such as Robert J.Wilke and Jack Elam) amuse themselves shooting the air and is when Wyatt Earp intervenes to keep the order . He is helped by his brothers James (John Smith) and Morgan (Peter Graves) who was badly wounded in the explosive showdown known as the Gunfight at the O.K .Corral (26 October 1881) . At the film appears Bat Masterson (Keith Larsen) working as a journalist . Bat was also a peace officer and gunfighter of legendary reputation as Earp and spent the last twenty years of his life as a popular sports writer on a New York newspaper , moving on to Dodge City , he served as a police officer and became a comrade of Wyatt . The motion picture develops pretty well the events around Wichita . The casting is frankly magnificent as the main characters (Joel McCrea , Vera Miles) as well as the excellent supporting actors (Edgar Buchanan , Lloyd Bridges , Wallace Ford and Sam Peckinpah plays a bit part as a bank teller). The picture was well directed by Jacques Tourneur . Rating : Good Western , well worth watching .