Riding Shotgun

When the shot-up stagecoach arrives in town with a supposedly dead driver slumped in his seat, he visibly sits up enough in order to control and stop the horses.

This is quite a suspenseful western story, filled with tension. Bad man Dan Marady ( James Millican ) and his gang of robbers, plan to rob a casino.

Recognized in its day as two or three cuts above your standard western entertainment, Riding Shotgun has lost little of its original appeal. True, the characters are one-dimensional – and Randolph Scott is no longer the hero he once seemed to be – but the story – obviously influenced by High Noon – gains tautness by its likewise insistence in observing the Greek unities of time, place and plot.

I'll watch any western with Randolph Scott and they run the gamut from great to not so hot. In the latter we have "Riding Shotgun", an illogical, muddled tale of Randy being mistaken as in cahoots with the gang that shot up the stage coach and plans to rob the town.

"Riding Shotgun" is a very entertaining western, were only they all so good. It boasts an unusual story and pacing: 80 percent of the movie takes place between a bloody stagecoach robbery in the beginning of the movie and a violent casino robbery at the conclusion of the movie.

Riding Shotgun is a western movie telling the story of Larry Delong, a stagecoach guard on the hunt for a gang of outlaws who attacked the stagecoach he was guarding, but his warning about them is dismissed by the citizens of Deep Water, who want the deputy remaining to arrest him on the belief that he was in on the attack. Now holed up in a cantina, Larry must find a way to escape and get his revenge.

After his family is murdered by a ruthless outlaw gang, a man by the name of "Larry Delong" (Randolph Scott) accepts a job guarding a stagecoach line in a certain part of the country under the firm belief that he will be able to find and kill the people responsible. However, in the course of his search for them he accidentally falls into a trap by that same gang and is almost killed.

For no logic reason whatsoever, our hero Randolph is left alive and sloppily tied up, so that freeing himself is like a walk in the park. After this idiotic beginning the film shifts into "stupidity high-gear" as Scott tries to convince a whole town filled with idiots that their town is going to get robbed.

This is a really enjoyable movie that keeps getting better the longer it goes, right up until the, lets call it, the second ending. I was going to give this a 7 but it just didn't finish as strongly as it could have.

Obviously because of it's length this Warner movie was made as a second feature for a double bill at 90 minutes in length. The thing is the director here does an excellent job of putting together a western drama and the color on this film is very impressive too.