A drifter called Gannon enters town after a rough ordeal on a train. First he couldn’t get to sleep on the train as a stowaway because a young fool kid would not stop trying to get on and the steward wouldn’t let him stay on. Then he and the young boy have seen a drifter knife the train steward. Then he had to fight for the life of the boy with said drifter over the incident. Now he has found some peace in a small town. Then come dragging along the young sidekick called boy. He meets an old female friend while in town called Maddie and sets about finding a job, a meal and a chance to drive cattle across forty thousand miles of freedom.

To review a film like this, I have to set out the stall of opinions external to this firstly. They are superfluous to our discourse but valid in the space of the films world. Gannon has a lot of bad said about it. Bad such as it is a softer remake of a great hard Western starring Kirk Douglas. It has wishy washy dialogue and feels about 20 minutes too long. My opinion of Gannon is that you have to overlook the bad and rejoice in the good and for me it has a lot of good in it. It comes from a line of both buddy westerns and civilization westerns of the late 60s that I love. It has a favourite American actor of mine,  Anthony Franciosa, who is charming and funny. It is directed and edited with skill and nuances and it looks gorgeous. For me this film is a key piece of western cinema that is at the tail end of pre revisionist westerns. It wants to talk and play but still reflect. Good not great but worth a watch and an own…

DVD is more vanilla than a box of ice cream but the film makes up for that. The box art however is nice and looks great on the shelf…