Enjoyable Audie Murphy western with the little guy as an outlaw who shoots the lawman after him, but gets mistaken for him when he turns up in a town. The town is ruled by a ruthless yet humorous judge (Walter Matthau) who is a little like Judge Roy Bean (always fining people, making up the law as he goes along), and the impersonating hero makes this feel like the filmmakers might have seen The Westerner. Complicating things are Gia Scala as a girl who knew outlaw Murphy who is forced to be his wife and a little kid.
Matthau is fun but if I'm honest he was a little too young and inexperienced at this stage of his career to knock it out of the park. Also his character at first is set up to be this bad ass but he softens and disappears from the action. Gia Scala's performance isn't much either but the fact she has a European accent at least gives this some novelty. Henry Silva pops up as the main villain, a gunslinger - Matthau should have been a baddie, too, but them's the breaks. This is still good fun, with some decent suspense and a believable transformation of Murphy from outlaw to respectable family man.
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