Pun Salad

Mr. Scott plays Bart Allison. Allison, in some ways, is your typical R. Scott character: stoic and single-minded. But Allison isn't particularly interested in legalities: at the beginning of the picture, he pulls a gun on a stagecoach driver, simply to get a drop-off at a pre-arranged location, where he can rendezvous with sidekick Sam (Noah Beery Jr.).

Sam has located Allison's bête noire, Tate Kimbrough, after years of searching; Allison wants to kill Kimbrough for (initially) unknown reasons. But Kimbrough has set himself up as an oppressive strongman in the little town of Sundown (see title), and has the local law enforcement (hey, it's Andrew Duggan!) on his side. And (by coincidence) he's getting married to one of Mudd's Women, the shapely Karen Steele.

So Allison and Sam have their work cut out for them. Worse, their initial confrontation with Kimbrough doesn't work out well at all. Eventually we learn more about Allison's reasons for wanting to kill Kimbrough, and become aware that it's not a simple black-and-white Western morality tale.

Problems: I like simple black and white Western morality tales. No spoilers, but the ending is kind of out of tune with your typical Randolph Scott movie.

In addition, one of the neat things about Mr. Scott's other movies is all the glorious western scenery his characters' stories play against. In contrast, most of Decision at Sundown takes place in a dreary little Hollywood backlot version of a generic western town. Boring!