Directed by Budd Boetticher
Written by Charles G. Lang
Starring:
- Randolph Scott as Bart Allison
- John Carroll as Tate Kimbrough
- Karen Steele as Lucy Summerton
- Valerie French as Ruby James
- Noah Beery Jr. as Sam
- John Archer as Dr. John Storrow
Rating: 
Without Burt Kennedy’s sinewy screenwriting, Decision at Sundown drifts through its revenge narrative like a western robbed of its own backbone. Boetticher opens in motion—Bart Allison descending upon Sundown with righteous fury—yet the screenplay by Charles G. Lang smothers its promising mythos beneath a haze of half-formed motivations and deflated tension. The film hints at a potent civic allegory: a town morally hollowed out under Tate Kimbrough’s glossy tyranny, rendered in vivid Technicolor that exposes every fracture in its purported tranquility. As the citizens sway from fear to furtive defiance, the story seems poised for a cathartic reckoning. Instead, Bart’s vendetta fizzles into an anemic parable, its emotional and psychological threads left dangling. The result is a western that gestures toward grandeur but collapses into a shrug.
