Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The frontier town of Red Butte has its history changed forever when an outsider rides through. Then with big sky landscapes, cowboys, a saloon, miners, a town marshal, sharpshooters, and a lynch mob, do we have a classic Western? You might think so, but there's just one thing: it's women who are calling the shots in Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar. As boss of her own saloon bar, Joan Crawford stuns as Vienna, delivering her lines like silver bullets, flanked by the enigmatic Sterling Hayden as outsider Johnny Guitar, and Mercedes McCambridge as the intense and twisted small-town grandee, Emma Small. In lesser roles, Ben Cooper channels Cagney as Turkey, Ernest Borgnine is rotten Bart, and Scott Brady is Dancing Kid. In this seriously underrated 1954 film, we are in the familiar territory of hero versus villain. But instead of the hero wearing a white Stetson hat, we have the hero in a white dress, and the villain in a black one. That is not mere casual experimentation with gender roles. In this genre-changing narrative, the action is wholly driven by two women whose sheer force of will power compels the men to follow their lead. Both Vienna and Emma are supremely competent businesswomen, equestrians, gunslingers, and confident public speakers - so much so that the men ultimately daren't cross them - unless goaded by the other woman. As well as treating us to an iconic Arizona landscape and cracking dialogue, this Western confounds expectations in other ways too. For a start, its production company, Republic Pictures, had director Ray as investing co-producer, so he wasn't beholden to a big mogul unwilling to bankroll character development and visual symbolism. For Ray had had a tutor in playwright Thornton Wilder, whose influence can surely be felt - characters are stripped so bare as to reveal their unique, but basic, human predicament. Ray had also studied under Frank Lloyd Wright, and that influence is revealed in spacious and geometrically composed camera frames. But our real focus of attention is how and why mature and experienced cattlemen and townsmen, just being ordinary men, neither fey nor effeminate, would let themselves be out manoeuvred by a brave female's resolve. The men's acquiescence seems entirely due to female strength of personality appearing as a direct response to circumstance, and as such, the acquiescence does not carry with it a sense of weakness or being emasculated. It's a level playing field we are seeing - and this from a male director in the 1950s. It's hugely moving to see any character who, in the face of death, calmly decides to withdraw her cash from the bank to pay her loyal men their wages, in case she's murdered. It's surprising, too, when that character undermines a shoot-out by using as armamentarium a command to help with breakfast. It's risky, it's funny, it's empowering, it's non-violent. It is fundamentally female, and contrasts sharply with stereotypically masculine, power-seeking provocation to violence. The resolution and dramatic balance achieved at the end results from how adults contain their passions, male and female. A firecracker of a film.

Johnny Guitar (1954) was directed by Nicholas Ray. It's a real Western--dust, mountains, and six-guns. What makes it different from other Westerns is that it has great actors, great color cinematography, and a plot with depth.Joan Crawford stars as a saloon keeper named Vienna. Crawford was 50 when she made this film, but she looks and acts younger. Sterling Hayden plays Johnny 'Guitar' Logan. He's hired by Vienna as "protection," but it's obvious that she has been--and still is--in love with him.Mercedes McCambridge portrays Emma Small, whose name tells it all. She's tough as nails, but she has a small mind, and nothing will satisfy her until she sees Vienna dead. (Why she wants him dead is a long story.) Other reviewers have called Emma hysterical. I don't see it that way. Like many small-minded people, she wants power, and no one will have real power with Vienna around. This is a kind of movie where you sit back, enjoy the action, but shudder at the thought of what happens when a strong leader is able to bring people together as a lynch mob. (Very appropriate for 2017.)This film won't work as well on the small screen, but, unless you're lucky, that's probably how you'll see it. We were fortunate enough to see the movie at the excellent Dryden Theatre at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY. The film was shown as part of an Ernest Borgnine retrospective. Borgnine plays the supporting role of Bart Lonergan, who, of the presumed bad guys, is the only one who is truly a bad guy. Also look for John Carradine who portrays Old Tom, the cook, whom no one notices.

I first saw this in film-grad school and didn't like it. I knew it was beloved by man cineasts but I just couldn't get over how artificial and over-the-top it was. I rewatched it recently and thought it fantastic! A bizarre experience, this film at once seems a work of genius and "so bad its good". Its allegorical critique of McCarthyism is spot-on and politically on-point. The gender-dynamic is one-of-a-kind. Both the main protagonist and antagonist are women, perhaps singular for a western of its era. Even yet, however, I can't call any work feminist that contains the following dialogue: "She hates him because he's the only man who ever made her feel like a woman, and she can't stand that!" The, um, operatic story is undeniably involving, if also ridiculous.

Movie quote - "I've never seen a woman who was more like a man." Let's face it - With this somewhat off-kilter, 1954 Western being a "Joan Crawford" vehicle - Who do you think was gonna get the juiciest dialogue? Who do you think was gonna be standing centre-stage in the meatiest scenes? And, whose character do you think was gonna be permitted to chew up the scenery, yet come out as the shining heroine at the end of this train-wreck?.... Who?... I'll give you exactly one guess who that was.You can be sure that "Johnny Guitar" (I wish this film had been titled something else) was a movie chock-full of hysterical, heavy-duty confrontations where it was the 2 women (not the men) who were clearly running the show.Time & again, it was Crawford, as the dignified saloon-keeper, Vienna, and Mercedes McCambridge, as the lynch-happy rancher, Emma Small, who were at each others' throats like a pair of ravenous vultures heading for the kill.Watching these 2 middle-aged babes go at it was, without a doubt, the crowning highlight of this decidedly "bent" Western. The absolute venom that was spat out between Vienna & Emma was so outrageously over-the-top at times that, before long, this story began to play out like something of a very twisted parody.All-in-all - "Johnny Guitar" definitely wasn't the best movie of its genre ever made, but, in the long run, it sure did pack one helluva mean-spirited wallop with its honest-to-goodness stab at attempting to reverse the gender roles of your average, 1950's Cowboy B-movie.