Garden of Evil

I'm having a problem understanding all the reviewers who call this film 'under-rated'. In fact, for me at least, the reviews it received are, if anything, a little too high. I love Cooper and Widmark generally as actors but Cooper's performance is wooden and he seems to be just reading his lines in places while Widmark is a caricature of the gambler/adventurer and comes across as unreal. Hayward is HORRIBLY miscast as a tough, resourceful woman and we never do see the love and devotion that is supposed to be driving her to rescue her 'husband'...she sure doesn't otherwise act like a devoted wife. The writing, despite the normally skilled writers is quite lackluster and bland and there are far too many long shots which do nothing for the story development and are just window dressing and filler using the lovely landscape shots. The scene involving Cooper putting a whooping on our young bounty hunter is laughably pathetic as he falls and STAYS down in the fire over and over......cringingly terrible and I couldn't help but laugh out loud. I think this movie was justifiably overlooked by time....it's a second rate effort by otherwise skilled actors and it's clear they didn't 'gel' at all.