Hour of the Gun

Hour of the Gun is a Western about Wyatt Earp in the years after the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Earp, working as a marshal in Tombstone, Arizona, kills several men belonging to Ike Clanton's faction in that confrontation. When Clanton's men retaliate by killing one of Earp's brothers, Earp sets out with his friend Doc Holliday to hunt down those responsible, a pursuit that grows into a wider campaign against Clanton's hold on the town.

John Sturges directed and produced the film, working from a screenplay by Edward Anhalt. It is the twelfth of the eighteen features Sturges directed, arriving between The Satan Bug and Ice Station Zebra, and it returns to Western territory he had visited before. James Garner plays Wyatt Earp, Jason Robards plays Doc Holliday, and Robert Ryan plays Ike Clanton, with Albert Salmi, Charles Aidman and Steve Ihnat among the credited cast of twenty-one. Made by United Artists and The Mirisch Company on a budget of two million dollars, the film took in roughly the same amount worldwide.

Audience scores sit in the middle range, at 6.6 out of 10 on IMDb from about 5,200 votes and 6.5 out of 10 on TMDB from a much smaller pool of 106 votes. A critics' rating of 6.9 out of 10 from eight reviews places it slightly above those audience figures, though the two sets of numbers are close.