Barbara Stanwyck (who else?!) plays landowner Jessica Drummond, a woman of the west who runs her Arizona territory with an iron fist, backed by forty hired guns. When a new marshal arrives in town with his two brothers, tension ensues – not least because Drummond starts to fall for him.
Marked by director Sam Fuller’s trademark kinetic style, including a memorable tracking shot, Forty Guns is today seen as one of the director’s best pictures and a vastly underrated western.