John Wayne: Guns Along the Trail, or, Why is Everyone Wearing That?

Is this worth your time?

If you love old B-westerns where the plot moves like molasses and the colors are cranked up to 'radioactive sunset,' you might actually have a decent time. If you need a script that makes sense or actors who don't look like they're reading off a blackboard just out of frame, skip this and go watch A Tale of Two Cities instead.

John Wayne is in it, which is the main selling point. He’s undercover in a medicine show, which feels like a weird choice for a guy built like a brick house. He doesn't exactly blend into the background, does he? Not exactly a master of disguise.

The Color Problem

They advertise this as being in "Vibrant Color," and they aren't kidding. Everything looks like it was dipped in neon paint. It’s distracting, honestly. At one point, I thought the sky was actually made of construction paper.

There's a scene where the medicine show wagon rolls into town, and I swear the horses look more tired than the actors. Yakima Canutt is doing his thing, which is always reliable if you like stunts that look like they hurt. There’s a lot of running around in the dirt, which is standard for this kind of thing.

Observations from the couch

• The counterfeiters are about as threatening as a group of toddlers.
• I spent ten minutes trying to figure out if Marion Burns' hat was actually changing shades between cuts. I'm 90% sure it was.
• The dialogue sounds like it was written on a napkin during lunch.
• There is an awful lot of pointing at things that aren't there.

The movie doesn't really care about the counterfeit plot. It just wants to get to the part where someone gets punched or a horse gallops across the screen. It’s almost charming in how little it tries to impress you. It’s like watching someone play with their childhood toys in the backyard.

It’s not quite as weird as The Wishing Ring Man, but it’s definitely got its own specific brand of chaos. You can tell they were just trying to fill the runtime. The pacing is a total mess. Sometimes it’s too fast, then we get five minutes of watching people eat beans.

Anyway, watch it if you want to see a younger Wayne doing the heavy lifting for a script that clearly didn't deserve him. Just don't expect a masterpiece. It's a relic, and it shows.