With Budd Boetticher in the director's chair, and a cast that includes Rock Hudson and Robert Ryan, you expect more from this Technicolored post-American Civil War western than is actually delivered. It is undermined by Louis Stevens's underdeveloped screenplay. Ryan's intriguing character - a man who has grown to love war and is prepared to break the law in his pursuit of danger - is not fully realised, while Hudson looks far too gauche as Ryan's lawman brother. The colourful Boetticher went on to become a cult figure in B-western circles, but this is not one of his best features.

Brothers Dan and Neil Hammond return to Texas after the Civil War. Ambitious Dan turns to rustling and then shady land deals to build an empire. Being held for a murder, he is rescued from a lynch mob by Neil, who is now the Marshal, but there is eventually a falling out between the brothers, good triumphing over evil.