User Reviews

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.

The premise is a familiar one—- a man's brothers swear vengeance on Paladin after the man in black is forced to kill him. But from there the story takes a few unexpected turns, especially when an aging sheriff has to decide whose side he's on.

This entry kicked off the second season so a strong one is expected, particularly after the successful first year. Boone is his usual persuasive self as the gunfighter, while veteran actor Calleia gets a challenging turn as the sheriff. Watch too for Martin Balsam as the lead brother, a year before he took that famous tumble down the stairs at the Bates motel. All in all, a better than average screenplay.

Joseph Calleia plays judgmental Sheriff Sam Truitt in this episode. When Paladin brings the dead body of a wanted man to his home town, he tells Sheriff Truitt that he knows he is a good man, and respects him. Truitt immediately responds by saying that Paladin murdered Dawes for money, that the sight of him sickens Truitt, and to get out of town immediately before he is killed off.

Truitt does not want to have to watch vermin like Paladin killed in the town limits. He is confident that Dawes three brothers will hunt him down. He also takes Paladin's gun and holds him over for an inquest, even though Truitt knows that Dawes had a warrant out for him "Dead or Alive." The Judge acquits Paladin due to the warrant, but that does not stop Truitt from continuing pile on more insults in every scene he is in with Paladin.

Eventually the Dawes brothers show up, and Paladin still has no gun. As he tries to get on the stage out of town (he has no horse), the Dawes brothers confront him and force him to stay in town to fight them.

While all the nastiness of the town Sheriff and the townfolks should have led to an awesome gunfight, it did not. Nobody deserved more to get his ticket punched than Sheriff Truitt, but Paladin just keeps turning the other cheek. He also beats the Dawes brothers with his brain, and not his gun, and teaches all of the people of this nasty town that he is a better man than all of them.

While I understand the greater moral lesson of this episode, every time I see it, I wish he had at least given Sheriff Truitt and the Dawes brothers the standard Western ending for villains.

I also want to point out that at the beginning of the episode, Truitt asks Paladin who paid him to bring in Dawes. Paladin says it is the family of Dawes' victim. It seems logical to me that since they paid Paladin to bring in Dawes, then he should have taken the dead body to them, and let them bury the guy, or take him into town. Paldin had no reason or requirement to bring Dawes to his home town.