Invitation to a Gunfighter

Invitation to a Gunfighter

Invitation to a Gunfighter
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DVD details

Actor: Alfred Ryder, Clifford David, George Segal, Janice Rule, Yul Brynner
Brand: Sony
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language); Spanish (Dubbed)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dubbed, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 92 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-05-17
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)

DVD Reviews of Invitation to a Gunfighter

DVD Review: Message received, invitation declined
Summary: 2 Stars

A run-of-the-mill hired gun oater told from the hired gun's point of view. Yul Brynner stars in INVITATION TO A GUNFIGHTER, a western with a conscience from 1964, a bad time for westerns made in the lower 48. Brynner plays Jules Gaspard d'Estaing (Jewel, for short,) a silk-shirted top-notch gun for hire who's enlisted by a small southwestern town to shoot George Segal, a young man returning from the Civil War who, much to town owner and chief psychopath Pat Hingle's horror and disgust, fought for the Confederacy. Segal returns to town bereft of farm, stolen--- er, claimed and sold by Hingle while he was gone - and sweetheart Janice Rule, a New England lass who married a one-armed piano player out of pity. After Segal tries to take back his farm, rather forcefully and impulsively, Hingle's hatred for all things southern boils over and he hires one of the best guns in the lawless west.

At some point in the movie Brynner's character observes that this cowed frontier town is filled with hens (Civil War widows) and capons (injured vets of that war.) It can be ruled by anyone with enough moxie to take it over, and hence we're given the reason why Hingle's character is named Brewster - well, it rhymes with rooster, anyway, and his penchant for quoting and paraphrasing passages from the Bible is Hollywood's shorthand way of telling us he's either a fraud or criminally demented. In any event, the slave system Segal may (underline and italicize the word `may') have been fighting to protect and defend is clumsily contrasted with the Hingle-led town's treatment of women and resident Mexicans. Neither can vote in town councils, the Mexicans can't buy ammunition to kill game to feed their families, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Which reminds me, Brynner ain't half-bad as the suave and conflicted gun slinger. It probably goes without saying that there was only one man, recently returned from the war, who treated the resident Mexicans with any respect. That fact doesn't escape Brynner's attention, anyway, and it sets up the Big Conflict - does a hired gun let outside factors interfere with his contract to kill? INVITATION TO A GUNFIGHTER would have been a whole lot better if it hadn't tried so hard to prove the town's moral hypocrisy, if it hadn't spent so much time developing a sticky romantic quadrangle between Rule, Brynner, Segal, and the One-Armed Man, and especially if it hadn't loaded a simple story with so much `message.' Westerns, and action movies in general, work best when the connection between motivation and action is simple and direct. In ItaG that connection is hopelessly, and needlessly, tangled. Brynner has a lithe intensity that rises above the material and almost, but not quite, carries this movie along with him.
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Description of Invitation to a Gunfighter

Oscar® winner* Yul Brynner turns in a "great performance" (Los Angeles Herald Times) as a smooth master gunfighter who must do battle with his most formidable adversary ? his own conscience ? in this gripping, double-barreled western full of blistering shootouts, surprise twists and colorful villainy. In a New Mexico frontier town, Jules Gaspard d'Estaing (Brynner) is hired by the town's boss (Pat Hingle) to kill Matt Weaver (George Segal), a Civil War veteran who returns to reclaim his farm and his woman. But when d'Estaing realizes that Weaver may be the only honest man left, the conflicted hired gun must either kill an innocent man ? or destroy his own reputation ? in a heart-stopping final showdown.
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