Sean Morrow Lot of different things going on in this enjoyable civil war type western. The plot is set in motion in the opening frames when a ruthless raider named Luke Contrell (I guess he's the union version of William Quantrill) burns out the Three Bells ranch in Texas. The Three Bells is run by 3 friends, Joel McCrea, Zachary Scott and Douglas Kennedy (I hope you don't mind my convention of referring to the characters by the actor's names, it's just easier and apart from Contrell, the names don't mean much) who set of for Brownsville to get even. Contrell carries out his raiding under the protection of the union army, which prevents our hero, Joel McCrea, from doing much more than beating him up and telling him to leave town.Our three heros -- it's weird seeing Zachary Scott as a hero -- are now kind of shiftless and looking for what to do next. Kennedy decides to join the Confederation and fight in the open. This is kind of different, the movie is set during the Civil War and one of the hero's decides to join the confederation and doesn't feel the need to talk about protecting his way of life. The union army might protect Contrell, but they don't like him much, and the commander offers to buy McCrea a drink after he beats up Contrell -- but McCrea don't drink with Yankees. McCrea and Scott get mixed up in gun running and take to the trade, blockade running guns from Mexico to the confederates.The romantic sub-plot is that a saloon singer played by Alexis Smith has set her cap for McCrea and McCrea's gal, Dorothy Malone, has followed Kennedy into fighting the good fight as a nurse (the film just never really gets into the nitty gritty of the politics of the civil war). I found the romantic business, usually something of a drag in the avg McCrea feature, to be pretty interesting and not quite so ham handed as is often done.The production values are not bad, the acting is pretty good, the story interesting and a little different. If you love westerns, and I presume you do if you've read this far, you could do a lot worse that this movie. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

malcolmgsw We all know how warner Brothers liked to keep on remaking their films,after all there are 3 versions of The Maltese falcon in only 10 years.So when i was watching this film so many similarities with The Roaring Twenties became apparent.We have gun running instead of booze.We have very similar plot lines eg one of the band goes over to the law and his wife who had rejected Joel Macrea,goes to Macrea who is now on the skids and boozing in a saloon habituated by a past friend Alexis Smith to ask him to save her husband.Well substitute Lynn Lane,Cagney and George and you have some idea of what i mean.The comic sidekick also gets killed two thirds the way through as does MacHugh in Roaring Twenties.Now i admit the ending is changed but i suppose that Warners had to show some originality!

bkoganbing Joel McCrea, Douglas Kennedy, and Zachary Scott are partners in the Three Bell Ranch in Texas as the Civil War starts. When war does come it splits the partners up. The ranch is raided by Victor Jory and his cutthroats and the partners are wiped out. Kennedy opts for enlisting in the Confederate Army. McCrea and Scott decide to go into gunrunning to make enough money to re-stock the ranch. McCrea makes enough, but Scott likes the profits and he wants to keep on gunrunning.As you can see the three partners all have different agendas. In fact everyone in this movie is working on his own agenda. The female leads Alexis Smith and Dorothy Malone have a hankering for McCrea. Victor Jory rides for the Union the Confederates and for himself. Bob Steele who's a slimy sort that Scott recruits in the gunrunning business has his own plans.Believe it or not it all jells into a very nice plot and is good entertainment. Joel McCrea was his usual stalwart hero as was Douglas Kennedy. Zachary Scott was no better than he had to be on any occasion. It's a good western and I wish it was shown more often.

kyle_furr This movie is filled with every cliche you can think of, and absolutely none of them work. The plot is predictable and the characters are not interesting, but boring. The acting is pretty bad, even by Joel McCrea. Even western fans should stay away from this one.