Lucy Lee is a young and pretty cattle owner, trying to get her herd to market to sell. One night in camp her and her partner are joined by Jeff Young a man who saves them when they are later ambushed by the Sundance Kid and his gang. Sundance reports back to Kit Banion (aka the Maverick Queen) and she in enraged by his failure. However the arrival in town of Jeff Younger gives her a new scheme to run. As she attempts to assert further power can the others stop her criminal schemes?
Starting out with the usual style of song over the usual sort of landscapes nothing gave me any doubts that this would be a fairly ordinary western adventure and indeed that is what it turned out to be. The plot offered potential because it is more than just the standard good guys/bad guys stuff this plot is driven by betrayal, lies, jealousy and intrigue. Shame then that it doesn't all come off, it is interesting and engaging but it does struggle to keep it tight with so many things going on I wasn't sure exactly what my focus was supposed to be. This is also seen by it taking 15 minutes before the title character actually made it onto screen, not that bad a thing but just further suggestion of the slight lack of focus that made it a bit harder to get into. The characters don't all make sense and again the lack of focus meant I was confused as to who I was following.
The cast aren't much help in this regard either because nobody really steps up and makes the film their own. Stanwyck tries hard but she was approaching the end of her long career at this point and she isn't helped by being left in the background for most of the start of the film while the much younger Murphy makes us think the film is about her. Sullivan is pretty good and has a nice easy charm. Brady, Petrie and a few others make for interesting bad guys but their performances aren't that interesting and they just accept whatever changes the script throws at them.
Overall this is an enjoyable enough western that is fairly run-of-the-mill despite having aspects of it that are more than the standard stuff. The plot is good but the lack of focus for large chunks means that it is a little difficult to get into and the solid if unspectacular directing and acting don't do anything to really remedy that. Enjoyable for genre fans but no more than that.
