Paladin must defend his purpose in carrying and using a gun, more persuasively than ever before, in this episode, which contains master class acting lessons by Martin Balsam, Joseph Calleis and Richard Boone himself. This episode also excels in depicting just how human rage, self-righteousness and debilitating indignation can drown out logic, reason, and the idea of gathering and considering all of the pertinent evidence before throwing a punch, firing a bullet, dropping a bomb . . . Paladin utters two of his very best, most touching speeches in "The Manhunter," struggling, mightily, not to be clumsily yoked by the stereotypes of "executioner" or "bounty hunter." This episode demonstrates starkly how what we see is often not the truth or not the whole truth and that, often, the verb "assume" makes an ass of u and me. The final scene with Boone and Calleis is yet another master acting class lesson in which words uttered only deliver a tiny portion of the communication coursing like electric current between two men who ought to have been on the same side of justice in this situation. "Have Gun Will Travel" was renowned in its day for portraying the more difficult man-versus- self and man-versus-society varieties of conflict in a decade suffused with Westerns that emphasized shoot-em-ups and chase scenes and predominately man-versus-man conflicts. I think that watching films like this one ought to be required viewing for budding diplomats and leaders at all levels: local, state, national and global.
Review of The Manhunter
