Review of Invitation to a Gunfighter

Introduction

MGM plunder their back catalogue once more, and dust off another Western for your viewing pleasure. If like me, you can only recall Yul Brynner donning the old shooting irons in The Magnificent Seven or Westworld, then Invitation To A Gunfighter gives another opportunity to see his shooting prowess.

The Civil War is over, and Rebel Soldier Matt Weaver returns home to New Mexico to settle down and run his farm. However his town has always favoured the Union, and the townsfolk aren`t too pleased to see his return. Town boss Sam Brewster has taken his land in his absence and sold it off to make a quick profit. Weaver is understandably irate, and after a heated argument, farm owner Medford ends up dead. A corrupt Brewster, who sees profit in re-igniting the embers of the war, fans the townspeople`s concern into a fury and pretty soon he`s calling for vengeance. He puts a price on Weaver`s head and decides to hire a gunfighter. It`s fortunate then, that Jules Gaspard d`Estaing also known as Jewel is passing through. He accepts the blood money, but finds the townspeople to be hardly as clean and upstanding as they claim to be. Profit seems to be the motive that drives most people, and the bigotry and division, especially between the rich and the Mexican poor makes mockery of the Union principles that most of the people espouse. To lay a trap for Weaver, he takes up room and board with the Adams above their convenience store. Ruth Adams was the former fiancée of Weaver and she presents a different viewpoint to Jewel. Soon he finds humanity creeping into his psyche, potentially fatal to a gunfighter. He also hides a secret of his own that drives him.

Video

The picture is presented in a 1.66: 1 letterbox format. The image quality itself is changeable. Initially sharp and pretty clear, there are moments of softness and significant print damage. There is also some cine wobble, and about 20 minutes from the end, the film jumps considerably.

Audio

This being a multilingual disc, you can find soundtracks in DD 2.0 English, German, French, Italian and Spanish, with subtitles in many more languages. The English track is accompanied by a constant hiss that eventually proves annoying.

Features

Nothing

Conclusion

Invitation To A Gunfighter is everything that a Western shouldn`t be, slow, tiresome and tedious. It`s presented as a morality tale on bigotry and prejudice, with emphasis on how the predominantly Unionist town react to Confederate Matt Weaver. Then there is the division between the rich Americans of the town and the way they treat the Mexicans who work for most of them. Finally there is the gunfighter himself, Jules Gaspard d`Estaing, whose own perspective on prejudice colours the way he reacts to the townspeople. This may seem like a good basis for a story, but the execution leaves much to be desired.

The film starts off in the right vein, with some excitement and action as Matt Weaver returns home to see the upheaval that has taken place in his absence. The resultant rampage is enough to motivate the town`s residents to act against him, hiring the gunfighter. At this point we forget about Weaver and concentrate on the introduction of Jules. The middle of the film concentrates solely on him, forgetting Weaver for much of the film. The film by now gets bogged down in character examination and dialogue. It drags interminably, and by the time the conclusion comes, it`s hardly worth waiting for. It`s also a problem that the film is more concerned with making its point than realism, and the final twist is completely implausible.

Yul Brynner gives a nice measured performance as Jules d`Estaing, but George Segal`s portrayal of Weaver is curiously idiosyncratic. The rest of the cast is variable, but none really stand out, with some curiously misjudged performances looking out of place.

The ultimate problem with Invitation To A Gunfighter is that it lays on the message a little too thick. It`s hard to take it as a piece of entertainment when it feels as if you are being preached to. The disc is unimpressive, in terms of both audio and visual. There are better Westerns available too.